


What She Needs

by sweet_villain_x



Category: Caeda Paren, Critical Role (Web Series), original character - Fandom
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-11
Updated: 2020-08-04
Packaged: 2021-03-03 05:35:30
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 13
Words: 22,975
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24119623
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sweet_villain_x/pseuds/sweet_villain_x
Summary: A journey into Caeda's backstory and how she became such a bitch
Relationships: Caeda Paren x Phineas Gale
Kudos: 3





	1. We Need Eggs

“We need eggs,” Caeda whispered as the roof caved in.

It was on fire. She wasn’t sure how the horde had managed that, but there was no mistaking the orange blaze from where she stood on the hill. She fought herself not to sink to her knees as the monsters ran in and out of her home. There was the well she’d nearly fallen in when she was ten. If she looked across the square, the schoolhouse where Alla had seen her conjure a simple flicker of light on accident after one of the boys had teased her about her horns. All of it was burning.

Caeda wasn’t a strong person, at least not in her body, but it didn’t stop her from pushing herself off the ground and running. The monsters barely noticed her, too busy with corpses and screaming from other places to waste time chasing a moving target. She went to her usual shortcut - and jumped back as a piece of flaming wood fell to the ground.

_No, no, no._

She’d come here to be safe. Where, after all, was safer than home?

The night was thick with smoke as she ran, and she had to stop to cough ash out of her lungs, hands on her knees. Behind her, there was a scream, and she ran again. She dodged falling embers and slashing claws, ran through the cramps and the fire until she reached it, then fell to her knees all over again. The garden where she’d taken her first steps was a mess of ash and dust. The window she’d sat and read in was burst to pieces, shattered glass across the ground. And inside - Caeda swallowed a sob and forced herself toward it. It was smokey, like the rest of the neighborhood, but the flames had already devoured it, leaving a burning black hole in its wake. She wrapped her hood around her face and crossed the threshold.

Her father - her human father, not whatever elf had sired her - lay in the hall. His throat was a mess of red gashes, and the flesh had all but been charred off his face. He was still, and his eyes were open and dead. Caeda tumbled to the ground and prodded at him. “Papa,” she mumbled. Shaking fingers searched for his hand. They closed around his own fingers, cold now that the fire was gone. Caeda pressed his face to her chest and sobbed, “Papa, Papa.” She caught her breath, and her eyes fluttered open to the small, modest kitchen, where her mother’s body lay twisted unnaturally over the table. Her legs stuck out at a terrible angle, and her head lolled to one side. Caeda rushed to her, steadied herself on the table, then was sick all over the floor.

She couldn’t tell how long she stayed with them. She cried until every last tear was gone from her body. When the smoke cleared, the sun broke the horizon, and screams faded into silence. Caeda stumbled out of her home to the neighborhood she’d grown up in. Not her ancestral home, but a home nonetheless.

Once, she’d wanted nothing more than to stay here forever and not have anybody look twice at her pale skin and eyes in the market.

Once.

Then she'd wanted different things. Stupid things, that got her dead parents, just like Davlen had warned her. 

And she hadn't made it in time.

Now, as she waded through the rubble of her home, there was only one name turning over and over in her mind.

_Ikathon. Ikathon. Ikathon._


	2. Chapter Two

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A romantic flashback

SIX MONTHS EARLIER 

Volstruckers weren’t supposed to fall in love. 

That’s what Caeda told herself when she’d first seen Davlen. Human, but tall - taller than her, if only slightly, and pale like her, too. If she lacked physical strength, she made up for it with grit and magical skill. Davlen was the opposite. 

  
She’d never seen him cast a successful spell. She had seen him win more fights than one could reasonably be expected to get away with at the Academy.   
She’d seen him walk out of Ikithon’s office with his head held high and his eyes dry. She always cried, no matter how much he told her not to.   
So she’d gotten in Davlen’s way and said, matter-of-fact, “I need your help.” 

  
He cocked an eyebrow at her. 

  
“You never cry,” she said. “I don’t want to cry. I want to be strong.” 

  
Davlen had taken her in, the frailty of her body and her fierce, pale eyes, and she’d decided right then and there he would be her rival, the stick she always measured herself against. 

  
But she hadn’t expected him to lean forward and say, “I cry. Just not in front of him.”

  
They hadn’t spoken for a few weeks. But Caeda thought about him. She thought about him more than she wanted to. More than she should. 

Then, one day, she’d been in the library late, going over a spell book and trying to master a shielding spell. She’d heard a shudder, and somebody thud to the ground. She turned the corner and it was Davlen, with his back against the bookshelf, his hands in his hair and tears running down his cheeks. He hadn’t looked at her or asked who it was when Caeda sat down next to him, but his hand turned over to grasp hers. He’d cried for a bit, and then collapsed his head into her shoulder. She’d stroked his hair until he was still, and then they both got up and somewhere, silently, agreed to ignore what had happened. 

  
It was harder to avoid him than ever in the week that followed. He was everywhere. 

  
In the baths. In the food hall. At each of her practice sessions. 

And he was always, always in the courtyard when she came from Ikithon’s office. She’d emerge, and he’d look at her, and they’d nod at each other and go their separate ways. 

So she did it for him too. 

There was another night in the library, and this time Caeda was the one crying. He held her, and she whispered, “Why are you here?” 

He’d responded in an equally soft voice, “Because they asked it of me.” 

She lifted her head from his shoulder and looked him directly in the eyes.

“No. I mean, why are you _here_?” 

  
Davlen traced a finger down her cheek. 

  
“Because you are.” 

Then he kissed her, and there was a tear of clothes and mouths and fingers, and they had no choice but to love each other by candlelight on the library floor.

  
They didn’t talk in front of the other students. But when they passed each other in the halls, his fingers would brush hers, a small, gentle squeeze. She stayed in the courtyard for him, and he for her. They met in the library, always. She never invited him to her room, and he never invited her to his. But it didn’t matter, because the library was dark and quiet and full of books, full of knowledge, and Caeda knew so little she would believe anything Davlen told her. 

  
So when he’d pulled her against him and whispered, “I love you” onto her lips, she believed him, and she said it back. 

  
It went on like that for the better part of the year. Nobody asked either of them about it - they were both studious and solitary. And if they had any thoughts about what the end of the year meant, they never shared them with each other. 

  
So it was a shock when on one of their library nights, Davlen had held Caeda at arm’s length. He was shaking, and she couldn’t still it. 

  
“What happened?” she begged, and forced him to look at her. Her fingertips found his bony hips and she drew him close to her. For a moment, he relaxed, then tore out of her grasp again. 

  
“Davlen, you’re scaring me.”

  
“You should be scared,” he snapped, and ran a hand through his blond hair. 

  
Caeda took a step back. Her eyes watered. Davlen’s face fell, and as Caeda turned to leave, he caught her hand and pulled her close. He folded her into his arms and kissed the top of her head, difficult to do, since he wasn’t much taller than her in the first place. 

  
“I’m sorry,” he murmured. “It’s just…”

  
“Tell me,” she begged. “I want to help you. Please let me help you.” 

  
His eyes searched her face like he was trying to memorize it. He stroked her cheeks, the pointed ears. 

  
“I saw Ikithon today,” he said. 

  
“I know.” 

  
She’d waited for him in the courtyard like she always did. 

  
“Caeda,” Davlen sighed in a tone she didn’t like. It sounded like goodbye. “He asked me to do something terrible.” 

  
Caeda brought her hand to his. “Terrible how?”

  
Davlen bit his lip. “I can’t say. But he’s going to ask you too, I know it. Don’t do it, when it comes.” 

  
His hand found her heart, and rested over the spot. 

  
“You’re too good.” 

"Are you going to do it?" 

He said nothing. 

  
“Davlen, you can tell me anything.” 

  
In response, he kissed her, gentle, soft, slow. 

  
“We’re not supposed to fall in love,” he said. “But I wouldn’t have made it through this if I hadn’t. With you. Remember that, please.”

  
Tears were threatening to spill from Caeda, because there was no denying it was goodbye. She kissed him again, and said, “Tell me you love me one last time.” 

  
He brought her head to his shoulder and said soft in her ear, “We need eggs.” 

  
“What?” 

  
“We need eggs, don’t you see? For our house, in the woods. Nobody knows where we live. We do simple magic, to mend socks, or make the garden grow faster. I cooked dinner yesterday because you had a headache and fell asleep early.”

  
Caeda caught on. “Keep going.” 

  
“We’ve never been to Rexxentrum, but we think it might be nice for a holiday. Our anniversary is soon. I have a surprise for you hidden in the house and you bother me about it every evening. Don’t you see, Caeda?” 

  
“I see. And you’re not a very good cook. You wouldn’t be, because someone’s always done that for you. But you tried, and you used too many eggs. So we need some.” 

  
He pulled away from her, and both of them were crying all over again. Davlen cupped her chin. Shakily, he said, “We need eggs.” 

  
Caeda’s lip trembled. Her voice was barely a whisper. “Go get eggs.” 

  
His fingers left hers slowly, because neither of them wanted to let go. He backed away from her without tearing his eyes away, and when he reached the candle, he leaned down and blew it out. 

  
“Don’t follow me,” he said to the library. 

  
Caeda wondered if he knew she could see in the dark. 


	3. The Tiefling

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Caeda gets a friend. She's not sure she wants one.
> 
> This isn't really related to the previous two chapters but I'm sure nobody cares lol

The tiefling was loud. She would have been noticeable if she wasn't loud, because she was also bright pink, but she was bright pink _and_ she was loud. 

Caeda frowned, her favorite expression, and buried her head in her book. 

All Caeda did these days was read. And read, and read, and read. That was all she knew how to do anymore. The vision of her parents, bodies bent and burnt, had dulled from slicing pain to a dull, constant ache. It stoked her like fire. Burned up her insides until there was nothing left. She was hollow. Bones and skin, and sometimes, when needed it, a little bit of magic. 

She filled herself with words. They swam before her eyes but somehow, she swallowed them, and they were her nourishment. She read about the Menagerie Coast, about sparkling waters and pirates and brothels. She read about far-off mountains and gods, about elves and dwarves, about wars and the Dwendalian empire. She read about Zadash. She read about the Cerberus Assembly.

She read anything she could find about Trent Ikithon. 

Today she was reading about the plant species she could find if she traveled to through the Pearlbow Wilderness, which she'd never do and had no interest in, but they were words, so she was reading. She heard a bright, offensively cheerful voice cut through the archives of the Cobalt Soul, "Hello, have you seen my brother? He's tall and pink, and he looks just like me, really..."

Caeda tried to block the sound out. There was a muttered response, and the voice grew louder. 

"Really, if you could tell me just one thing, I mean even just one..." 

Caeda narrowed her eyes and peeked around the bookcase. The tiefling was of middling height, slightly taller than most humans, bright pink, and bustled with a nervous energy that made Caeda, somehow, want to run. The blue robes of the Cobalt Soul were in stark contrast to her skin, and she had little horns that completed the look. 

"If I could just look around, ask some people some questions, I promise I won't be any trouble at all..." 

Caeda rolled her eyes, and started back to her book. They sometimes had loud people in the Cobalt soul. It was, after all, the capital. They would pass, just as everything passed. Everything, and nothing. 

"Hello," said a bright voice in Caeda's ear. "Can I ask you a few questions about a tiefling - maybe you've seen him, he looks just like me -" 

"Go away," Caeda said flatly. 

The tiefling blinked. "Okay, that was kind of rude, but it's okay, I'm really friendly and I just want to -" 

"I said," Caeda growled, "go away." 

The tiefling shrugged, and turned around. 

Caeda rarely did magic anymore. She didn't need anyone knowing where she was. Who she was. But something about the tiefling made her stop, focus, and mutter under her breath until she'd conjured an illusion of low, steady voices to follow her. Caeda followed one step behind, watching as the tiefling stumbled through the spell, confused. 

Then something miraculous happened. Caeda laughed. 

And she did the spell again. 

She wasn't expecting the tiefling to say loudly, "Okay, whoever's doing this spell on me, you can stop it now. It's very rude." 

There was a breath. "Actually, I know it's you. The mean elf. You can stop it now." 

Caeda's frown only deepened. She cast the chatter away, and instead summoned an image of bright light and sent it toward the tiefling. 

Caeda didn't expect the small tug at her ankles. She kicked. It felt like a rat. But it was shaken off with one kick. Then a stone came sailing through the air, and hit Caeda in the forehead. 

"Ow," she grunted as it bounced off her and disappeared. 

"That was very rude!" the tiefling called. 

"So is interrupting people's reading," Caeda called right back. 

Caeda wasn't a cruel person. At least, not the way they'd wanted her to be. But anger tinged by grief seized her, and she muttered through her teeth, until what others saw her as was a pink, male tiefling. She barged through the lights and confronted the tiefling, who promptly burst into tears.

Then she went flying at Caeda with her fists. 

"You _asshole -_ " 

Caeda caught the fist in a hand, but her strength had diminished among the books, and she was no match for the muscular tiefling. Kicks and punches landed on her, padded by falling tears. 

"Stop," Caeda gasped, and ended the spell. "Stop. It's not real. It was a spell." 

The tiefling's fist hit her nose, and blood started to leak. She realized it was Caeda, drew back, and promptly crossed her arms. 

"Now that was _really_ rude." 

Caeda said, for the first time in months, breathless, "I'm sorry." 

The tiefling frowned at her. "You can't just go around turning into people's brothers." 

Caeda swallowed. "I know. I lost my family, too. It was - it was very cruel of me." 

The tiefling considered Caeda, and Caeda shivered under her gaze. She wasn't a cruel person. 

She hoped she wasn't cruel the way they expected her to be. 

"What's your name?" asked the tiefling. 

She paused. She didn't need to tell her. Didn't need to tell anyone anything. And she hadn't, for almost a year. But when she looked at the tiefling, who'd had the whole Cobalt Soul to harass, but somehow landed on _her,_ she couldn't help but feel like there was something pulling her there. Maybe it was magic. Maybe it was fate. 

Or maybe it was the fact she'd made Caeda laugh. 

She could barely remember doing that. 

"Caeda," she said. 

The tiefling wiped her nose, and stuck out a hand. "I'm Ismene." 

Hesitantly, Caeda reached out, and grasped it. She lurched as Ismene pulled her along. 

"My book -" Caeda protested. 

"You can go back to the book later," Ismene said. "Right now we have people to talk to, and I can tell you haven't talked to anyone in a long time." She threw a glance over her shoulder at Ismene, and grinned. "Cheer up, grumpy. We're going to be friends." 

Caeda didn't laugh again. But she didn't let go. 


	4. Seeing in the Dark

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Caeda and Phineas get a little Romantic

Caeda didn’t know why they were transporting the man, nor did she know why she couldn’t seem to tear her eyes from his face. He was about her height, slender, too, and utterly human. His glasses were always slightly askew in a way that made Caeda want to reach out and fix them. Once or twice as she watched him sleep she even found her fingers reaching without her, then quickly pulled them back. 

  
Ismene gently snored on her shoulder. She studied Phineas’s face. There was nothing particularly special about it. It was pleasing, but not striking, a little too full in the cheeks, chin a little too pointy. His skin was pale from days indoors, and his fingers had ink stains on them. 

  
Caeda couldn’t stop herself from reaching out to brush hers lightly against them. 

  
Phineas started, and Caeda started, and then Ismene started. 

  
“Mmph…what….” 

  
“Sh,” Caeda said to Ismene, flashing wide white eyes at Phineas, hoping he’d received her message to keep quiet. 

  
He held her gaze, and kept his mouth shut. She stroked Ismene’s hair until she was asleep again, and moved her gently so her head was on a pillow on the floor.

She looked back at Phineas, unsure what to say, and was unnerved to find him studying her the way she’d been studying him only a moment before. 

“What were you doing?” he whispered. 

  
“Nothing,” she whispered back. 

  
He stood. He was eye-to-eye with her, although her horns made her appear a bit taller. A smile tugged at the corner of his lips, and he held his fingers to her eyes.

  
“It’s dragon’s blood ink. Stains like a bitch.” 

  
Caeda sucked her cheeks in. She knew what dragon’s blood ink was like. She’d scrawled notes upon notes with it at the Academy. So much her fingers had gone black. 

  
Hearing him confirm it so casually, she wanted to smile. 

  
She couldn’t remember the last time she’d wanted to do that. 

  
“I know,” she said, and sat down. Phineas sat down across from her. 

  
“Can you see me?” he asked. 

  
“Yes.” 

  
“You’re unusual.”

  
She cocked an eyebrow before remembering although she could make out each plane of his face, to him she was simply a shadow in the dark. 

  
“Unusual how?” 

  
He released a short laugh. “Beyond the fact you’re a pallid elf…”

  
Caeda frowned and her ears must have flicked down enough he could see them, because Phineas quickly followed with, “I meant to say…you don’t mince words, and it’s not really like anybody I’ve ever met before.” 

  
“I don’t spend a great deal of time trying to be like other people.”

  
Phineas blushed pink. 

  
“No, that’s not what I meant at all. I…” 

  
“What were you doing for the Locksmiths?” Caeda interrupted him. He’d reached up to muss his hair and his glasses had gone askew again. Again she got the urge to reach out and fix them. She sat on her hands. 

  
Phineas opened and closed his mouth. “I can’t tell you that.” 

  
“I’m a Locksmith. Of course you can.” 

  
He narrowed his eyes at her. “It would be safer for you not to know.”

  
Now Caeda really did laugh, which surprised him. “The things I know…I am already very unsafe.” 

  
He only stared at her for a brief while. 

  
“Why are you looking at me? You can’t see.” 

  
There was a silence. A breath. He shifted, and she felt a knee brush against hers, the briefest flicker of a thumb pressed lightly on her hand.

  
“There’s more than one kind of awareness.” 

  
She couldn’t help herself from reaching out and fixing his glasses. He let her do it, traced the pale white of her hands with his eyes, and she could see he was blushing even harder than before. 

  
“Maybe more than one kind,” she said, “but without them all working the way they’re supposed to, they won’t save you.” 

  
“Who says everyone wants to be saved?” 

  
Caeda swallowed and dropped her hands. She stood, and backed away from the man with dragon’s blood ink on his hands. 

  
“You should sleep. It’s a long journey tomorrow.” 

  
She saw him scratch his head, then stand and fiddle with his pants. He stalked back to his spot, but before he sat down, he turned his head over his shoulder. His expression was different - not awkward, not fearful or even curious. He knew what he wanted to say. 

  
“We don’t have to be afraid of each other. Of trusting each other. If we can’t trust each other, they win.”

  
Caeda clenched her fists. The sounds of steady breaths were all there was to tamper the taut silence between them before Phineas spoke again. 

  
“I trust you. I don’t know why. But I thought you should know.” 

  
He sat down and leaned his head against the wall. Caeda walked in a circle before going back to her watch. She wrang her hands out and ran her fingers through her hair. 

  
She didn’t trust anybody except Ismene. That was the only way to make sure she didn’t get hurt, that she stayed safe. She glanced over her shoulder once at Phineas. His eyes were closed, but his body was angled toward her, like he was ready to spring into action if he needed to. 

  
Trust was a risk. Caeda didn’t take risks.

  
At least, she didn't take them first. 


	5. Trust Me

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Caeda x Phineas ship SAILS

Telemniel cocked her head at Caeda as she went upstairs. Caeda’s heart pounded in her ears as she tore her gaze to the man across from her, looking at her with expectant eyes. Her fingers tightened around her ale, and she dropped her gaze and cleared her throat.

“So,” he said gently. She looked up at him and her lips tugged at the corners until she remembered the conversation they’d had when they made camp. He’d sat beside her in the wagon on two of the days, his arm pressed against hers, warm and electric. They’d had small conversations about Rexxentrum, the weather, anything but what was important, until one of the girls in the party inevitably interrupted with giggles and he turned away from her, blushing, and she stalked out to help Dorothy drive. Once Phineas had fallen asleep and his head had come down on Caeda’s shoulder. She’d gently shaken him awake, and he started and looked embarrassed, but his hand brushed hers as he sat up.

Now, with nobody else around them, all the reserved manner had faded from him. His eyes were wide behind his glasses in the dim light - a rich, warm brown. His skin was sun-kissed, and his throat bobbed up and down as he swallowed under her gaze.

“Did you mean it? That you could help me?”

“Of course,” he said, a bit too quickly. “I want to help you. In any way I can.”

“You understand you’re still a stranger to me.”

He strained toward her in earnest. “Ask anything you like and I shall tell you the answer.”

Caeda paused, turning everything over. The truth was on her lips, and she remembered her promise. I won’t tell you, but I can show you. That’s what this was - _show me_ , Phineas was saying to her with the turn of his chest, his open palm on the table. _Show me you, and I’ll show you me_. But Caeda would never be the first. Not again. So she looked at her drink, almost empty, and said, “What’s the worst you’ve ever done for the Locksmiths?”

A stricken look passed across Phineas’s face, and it was his turn to look into his empty cup. “At the beginning, a Volstrucker student came to us for help. I’ll never forget the look in his eyes - the fear. He was so afraid, and I wanted to help, but Quana thought it too much of a risk, so I did nothing. It will haunt me for the rest of my days. I stood by and did nothing.”

Something in the shell around Caeda’s heart cracked. Just a bit. “Would you help him now? Would you go against Quana for it?”

“Yes,” Phineas said without hesitation. “I cannot stand by an Empire that would do such a thing to its own citizens, no matter what Quana thinks.”

Caeda released a heavy breath. “If I show you…what I promised to show you, you must understand you will also be in grave danger. Not only for your body, but your soul. And the body and soul of everyone you love.”

He looked at her for a long moment, and he held her gaze as he said, “Caeda. I was in danger from the moment I joined the Locksmiths. I was in danger the moment I met you.”

She stood, flexed her hands.

“I’ve lost nearly everyone I’ve loved. There’s really only one of them left.”

The heat of a body behind hers.

Phineas reached out, gently turned her by the shoulders so she was looking at him. He trailed a finger down her shoulder, watching it as it went, like he couldn’t believe she was letting him touch her. His hand found hers, and she felt him take it, then press it to his heart. She felt it beating loud and quick, aggravated by the presence of her hand. With his other hand, Phineas lifted Caeda’s face to look at him. So close, so open. She remembered what he’d said to her the first night they’d escorted him. _If we can’t trust each other, they win._

“You can trust me,” he whispered, like he was reading her mind.

In response, she kept her hand on his heart as she turned her head to press her lips gently against his cheek.

“Come find me when you’re ready to know,” she said.

“All right,” he said, but he didn’t turn away. Instead he moved even closer to her. He looked at her lips and slowly reached up to tuck a lock of hair behind her ear. His finger brushed against the ring on the tip of her ear, and with a start she remembered who it was there for. She took a startled step back, blinked at him, smiled and then bit her lip to keep from smiling wider.

“Find me,” she repeated, and tore herself away from Phineas before she could make any more bad decisions.

Caeda thought about the warmth of Phineas’s skin under her lips all night. She wished she’d been braver. Or he’d been braver. But she was terrified. She’d been terrified ever since seeing those bodies. No. Before that. Ever since Davlen. Ever since Ikithon.

So she’d hid, and she’d never found something - somebody - who’d made her want to step into the light before. She’d never met anybody who made her feel stronger. Who said she was right. She sat on the bed in her room, wondering if he was still downstairs, wondering if she would open the door and find him waiting there. What his lips would feel like on hers, what his body would be like under all those clothes. If hers would respond the way it once had.

She’d had one or two people in her bed since Davlen. When her body had gotten hungry, she’d gone out to a pub and found the best-looking, most-willing participant and hadn’t even said goodbye in the morning. This didn’t feel like that at all.

Caeda looked at the empty bed across from her. Ismene was always pushing her in one way or another. She was used to Ismene pushing. She wasn’t used to wanting to go in the same direction. She bit her lip, got up, and went to the door. His face had been so close. She laid a hand on the doorknob.

_We need eggs._

Somebody else had been close, once. That’s the reason Caeda was in this mess in the first place. She shook her head and went back to her bed. She laid a hand over her heart. Thump thump thump. It sometimes felt like all Caeda’s heart knew how to do was ache. But when she brushed her fingers over her lips, she smiled. She felt light as air. 

***

The next day, Caeda went shopping. She’d laid awake in the dark all night, and when Ismene burst in in the morning and gleefully prodded her about Phineas, she frowned and said, “Let’s go spend some of this gold.” Telemniel and Dorothy tagged along, walking a few steps behind them. Maggie had stayed behind, claiming a hangover, and Caeda was distrustful enough of Maggie not to ask any more questions.

“ _Sooooo_ ,” Ismene sang to Caeda as they walked through the Court of Colors, picking up brightly colored cloths and jeweled things and putting them back down. “I heard you were alone with Phineas last night.”

Caeda glanced over her shoulder at Telemniel and Dorothy.

“It’s nothing,” she growled.

“It doesn’t seem like nothing,” said Ismene. “It seems like a lot, actually.” The tiefling seemed to bustle with pleasure. “Just admit you like him.”

Caeda closed her eyes and felt the hoop on her ear. She’d never told Ismene what they meant, because she’d never told anyone what they meant. She didn’t want to add another hoop. “Where are the potions here?”

Ismene huffed. “I don’t know what the big deal is, honestly. It’s just a crush.”

“It’s not,” Caeda corrected her.

Ismene’s eyebrows lifted at the confirmation. “So you do like him.”

“It doesn’t matter if I like him or not. I _can’t_.”

She guided them into a stall filled with vials of every conceivable color, the magical aromas mixing together in a heady, almost intoxicating scent. She asked the shopkeep to show her all the healing items on hand before turning back to Ismene. “You don’t understand at all.”

Ismene narrowed her eyes at Caeda. “I think I do. I think I understand that you do like him, and you’re very afraid because loving someone means trusting them and you don’t know how to do that. But it’s not always bad. I had to force my friendship on you and look how we turned out.” She rolled a piece of gold between her fingers, then flashed it at the shopkeep when he returned with the items. Caeda made a strained noise. “So what really happened last night?” she said loud enough for Dorothy and Telemniel to hear.

Caeda blushed involuntarily as she thought of Phineas placing her hand over his heart. The expectant, earnest look in his eyes. Ismene gasped. “You didn’t -”

“No,” Caeda cut her off. “It was nothing like that. It was just a conversation, that’s all.” She gestured to the shopkeep that she wanted to buy three of the healing potions. He named a price too high, and Ismene immediately jumped in to haggle on her behalf. “That’s absurd. We got these for half the price in Yrrosa,” Ismene said to the shopkeep before turning to Caeda. “What kind of conversation?”

Caeda had never wanted to run into the sea of colors so badly in her life.

“It was nothing,” she insisted. Ismene and the shopkeep agreed on a price, and Caeda handed over her gold and swept the potions into her bag. “We simply agreed to show each other some things in the city.” Caeda tried to sweep out of the shop, but Ismene stopped dead in her tracks.

“Cae. Da. That is a date.”

“It is not,” Caeda insisted, and ran her finger over the hoop in her ear again. Telemniel cast a cool glance at them, and said, “It definitely is.” Dorothy nodded her agreement.

Ismene clapped her hands in delight. “Did you know in the year I’ve known Caeda I’ve never even seen her so much as smile at somebody?”

She directed the question to Dorothy and Telemniel, who both smirked at Caeda. Caeda felt her cheeks go hot and she turned away. “Leave me alone,” she grumbled, but when she exited the tent, the girls behind her erupted into giggles. Because she’d run straight into Phineas.

Of _course_ she had.

He jolted at the sight of her and dropped all the papers he was carrying into the crowd. She jolted, too, then watched them get trampled, and immediately dropped to help him pick them up.

“Hello,” Phineas blurted as she crouched down, smiling, then noticed a paper tumble away and dove after it. Caeda gathered what she could, then glared over her shoulder at her party. Ismene waved her fingers daintily, still snickering, then elbowed Dorothy and Telemniel away. “I’m going to go look at shiny things! See you later, Caeda!” she called in her sing-song voice.

When Phineas once again surfaced in front of her, she was alone. She handed him the papers she’d gathered, and as he took them their fingers brushed and he smiled at her. It seemed the whole world slowed in that moment, until somebody tried to move around Caeda and jostled her in the process. She tripped forward, straight into Phineas’s arms. He caught her and shouted, “Watch it!”, but the stream of people was moving again. Their moment of silence was over. Phineas righted Caeda and placed a hand on the small of her back as he guided her away from the crowd.

“What are you doing here?” he asked over the din of people.

“Shopping,” she answered. “What are you doing her?”

“I live here,” he answered with humor.

“I mean in the Court of Colors.”

He brandished his papers at her. “Business.”

When they were safely away from the stream of people, he released Caeda, and she felt the lack of his hand on her back acutely. “What business do you have in the Court of Colors?”

“For our mutual friends,” he answered, and showed her the papers. Little markings and equations all over. He put his head close enough to hers she could feel it. Her horns almost brushed his hair. “I’m good with money,” he said by way of explanation. “I was just making rounds.”

“Oh.”

Caeda wondered how it was possible for him to somehow look better in the day time. He looked clean, which meant he hadn’t stayed in the pub all night waiting to see if she was going to invite him up, which made her heart feel a little heavier, but his pupils were wide behind his glasses and he wasn’t looking at anything else but her.

“How was your night?” he blurted, and Caeda smiled despite herself.

“You were there for most of it.”

“Right.” He swallowed, and looked at her again. “I did not expect to see you here. Pardon me.”

“I didn’t expect to see you either.”

“And yet we’ve seen each other.”

“So we have.”

Phineas swayed on his feet and glanced around, fiddling with his papers again.

“Do you have more business to attend to?” Caeda asked.

Phineas’s smile widened and he shook his head. “Nothing pressing. I - I could walk you back to the inn. If you don’t know your way.”

Caeda blinked. She knew the way. But she said, “Take me the long way.”

Phineas started, and his glasses fell slightly askew. Caeda reached up and fixed them. “Thank you,” he said, and held his arm out to her, then hastily realized it still had papers in it and switched to the other arm. She laughed and took it, and they strolled out of the busy bazaar together.

He took her through the colorful Tangles, pointing out buildings she’d never noticed in Rexxentrum before, supplying her with childhood stories. They stopped in front of a tall, columned building with twin gargoyles on polished steps. “This is where I went to school,” he announced proudly.

“What was your favorite subject?”

“History,” he said with a dark glance.

“Not mathematics?”

“No. It wasn’t until I got older I realized much of what I’d been told was a lie.”

Caeda’s hand landed on his arm and she squeezed. He put his hand over hers and squeezed back. They passed the road Caeda knew led to the Academy and her body tensed.

“Are you all right?” Phineas asked, dropping off from his story about being dragged around to meetings with financiers by his parents. Caeda’s hand absentmindedly went to the hoop in her ear as she looked in the direction of the Academy. “Um.” She blinked. “Sorry.”

She turned away from him, marched ahead, but Phineas caught her hand. He wasn’t smiling anymore. He was all concern. For her, it was all for her.

“Caeda,” he said softly. It was a question.

“Not yet,” she answered.

In the distance, she saw a flash of robes, and a face she recognized. Not Ikithon, but perhaps worse. Zivan. “Shit,” she cursed, and turned on her heel. She hadn’t disguised herself today, planning only to shop and return to the inn. She’d been so _stupid_.

There was nowhere to go - she and Phineas were standing in the open, not even an alley to duck into.

“C-caeda?” Phineas stammered. Caeda feinted around him, but there was nowhere to hide there. Another glance over her shoulder told her Zivan was getting closer, close enough to recognize her if he tried, and casting a disguise spell in the middle of the square would only draw more attention to her.

“Shit,” she said again, and with nowhere else to go, thrust her arms around Phineas and buried her face in his neck. “Play along,” she pleaded in his ear, and almost immediately his arms wrapped around her, folding her in. She felt a hand on the base of her neck, threading into her short hair. He dropped his cheek to her hair and squeezed her tight. “It’s all right,” he murmured, and rubbed gentle circles on Caeda’s back with the hand still holding the papers. “I’ve got you.”

For a moment, she closed her eyes and drank the smell of him in. Parchment and ink. Her fingers dug into the fabric at his back and she felt him shudder underneath her. She huddled even closer to him. She could hear his heart beating even from where she was, loud, irregular, fast. She snaked a hand between them and laid it against it, and felt it steady. Several moments after Zivan logically would have passed them, Phineas muttered, “They’re gone.”

But Caeda didn’t make any effort to disentangle herself from Phineas and neither did he. Instead he brushed her ear, which flickered under his touch, until he found the two hoops at the top with jewels dangling from them, one blue and one black.

“These are…”

Caeda looked up at him. His hands were still around her back, hers still flat against his chest. Phineas’s eyes traced the place Zivan had disappeared, the road heading toward the Academy. He looked back at Caeda and his eyebrows knit together.

“Let’s get you home,” he said with grave understanding, and stepped away from her.

“Thank you,” Caeda whispered, fighting the urge to reach for his hand and bury her face in his neck again. She hadn’t felt that safe for a long time.

The walk back to the Maiden and the Swan was tense and silent, but shortly before they reached it, Phineas found an alley and pulled Caeda aside. She braced herself for what was to come - he’d understood her danger and wanted no part of it, but instead he took her face in his hands and stroked her cheek with a thumb. Tears threatened her, and he wiped one away, then looked at the hoops in her ear again.

“I think I understand.”

“It’s dangerous,” Caeda warned him. “You don’t care for danger.”

“No,” he agreed. “But I do care for you.” He folded her into him once more, and this time the words he muttered into her hair were, “I’ll come tonight.”

“Promise?”

He pressed her hand to his heart once more, brief, and she felt it beat steady and strong. “Trust me.”

Caeda bit her lip, but nodded, and as she took the few steps backwards to the inn, he never took his eyes off of her. The rest of her party wasn’t back yet, so she went straight to her room and sat on the bed.

_Show me. Trust me._

She hadn’t meant to trust him. But somehow, she did.


	6. I'm With You

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> romance romance romance

Hushed dark fell over Rexxentrum, and Caeda didn’t close her eyes. She’d paced around the room all day, until night fell and Ismene had narrowed her eyes and said, “Why are you nervous?” 

  
Caeda swallowed and didn’t say anything, not even when Ismene’s face had lit up and she’d elbowed Telemniel and said, “Phineas is coming. Isn’t he, Caeda?”   
Caeda had only shaken her head. 

  
But he was. He was going to be here, and Caeda was going to reveal things to him she hadn’t so much as dreamed of doing to her closest friend.   
It was the promise of safety, yes - but it was also more. It was a press of lips on his cheek and the way he kept placing her hand over his heart. 

  
_Show me. Trust me._

  
Ismene had her own danger, that Caeda knew. They had a sort of agreement to dance around it, which is why Ismene hadn’t pressed when Caeda had asked her not to go to the Cobalt Soul that night. It did not, however, stop the teasing. 

  
Teasing which was turning out to be quite well-founded. As the sky grew inkier, Caeda’s heartbeat seemed to grow louder and louder. She sat at one of the tables downstairs and didn’t hear a word of the chatter because every drum of her fingers, every jostle of the bells above the door drowned out the noise. She looked up to check if it was him every time, and it never was. 

  
Until there was warm brown hair, a thin frame, and glasses, and Phineas saw her immediately and burst into an involuntary smile. Caeda stood up, knocking the table and jostling the cup of ale she hadn’t touched. She scrambled to right it, but dropped off as warm fingers closed over hers. 

  
“Leave it,” Phineas said with a nervous glance at Tisha, who gave Caeda a knowing look. Phineas held onto Caeda’s fingers a second too long, then dropped them, flexed his hands, and smiled to himself. 

  
“G-good evening,” Caeda stammered. She was back in her Cobalt Soul robes, for reasons other than that she looked good in blue, but she noticed Phineas’s eyes travel them appreciatively anyways. 

  
“Well,” he said. 

  
“You found me.” 

  
“It wasn’t hard,” he answered. Caeda was suddenly aware of eyes in the tavern on her and Phineas, and she didn’t care to be watched. She grabbed his hand and pulled him away and out the door. When they were outside, he didn’t let go. 

  
Caeda fought to keep the rising-bubbles feeling in her shoulders down. She pulled Phineas into the same alleyway he’d held her in the day before, and still he held on, looking between their entwined hands and her face like he couldn’t believe he was actually touching her. Caeda bit down on her smile and carefully lifted a hand to his cheek. He caught it, pressed it there and covered it with his own, then brought his forehead to hers. His eyes flicked to her lips and back, and she swallowed. 

  
“I have trusted you. Are you ready to trust me?” 

  
“You have given me no reason not to.”

  
Caeda glanced at the path outside the alleyway - empty and dark. She brought Phineas’s hand to her heart. 

  
“Trust me,” she said, and cast the spell. 

  
She’d disguised herself as Ismene before, but she never got over the shock of pink skin. Phineas stumbled back blindly, until Caeda found his hand, and he could feel it was her. His shoulders fell, and he brought his hand to her face once more. 

  
“I’ve seen magic,” he explained. “I just wasn’t prepared for you to do it.” 

  
He traced the outline of her face with his thumb, and Caeda shivered. It looked like he was tracing air. 

  
“The spell only lasts for an hour. We have to hurry.” 

  
She pulled him behind her, and this time he did let go of her hand. Caeda felt her heart cave in, but Phineas’s presence was still there, still electric beside her. She took him straight to the Academy, and if he thought anything about how well Caeda knew each turn and crevice of Rexxentrum when she’d pretended to be seeing it for the first time only yesterday, he said nothing. 

  
They arrived outside the walls, silent and still in the night. In the distance, a few shouts. 

  
Caeda stared at this place where so much had been taken from her. She’d gone there hoping for a chance at finally belonging to the world that had taken her. And she’d come out alone. Alone and desperate. 

  
It must have shown on her face, because there was a brush of fingers against her sleeve and Phineas said, “This isn’t all you wanted to show me.”  
Caeda swallowed and looked up at him. 

  
“You understand?” 

  
He nodded. “I do.” 

  
“And you’re ready to know?” 

  
For a moment, panic flashed across Phineas’s face. She remembered how he’d been when they’d found him in Yrrosa - paranoid, restless. She stepped back. She couldn’t be the downfall of another person. But then he turned her by the shoulder. 

  
“I’m ready.” 

  
A large exhale. 

  
“Follow me.” 

  
Rexxentrum was half as lively a city by night as by day, and being bright pink did attract some attention. People raised their eyebrows at the odd pair as they walked, and Caeda fought the urge to bury into Phineas. For his part, he walked perfectly in stride with her and kept a guiding hand on her elbow. When Caeda glanced over her shoulder, all she saw was Phineas’s face - eyes wide and warm and trained on her. 

  
She kept that feeling as they arrived at the Cobalt Soul. She took a breath, and asked herself, _What would Ismene do_?

  
She adopted her confident stride and bound up to the front desk. 

  
“Hello!” she shouted in an imitation of Ismene’s accent. Phineas’s eyebrows went up at her side, but then he stifled a laugh. “Is Orianus here? My friend and I would like to talk to him.”

  
The woman at the desk started, then appeared to recognize Ismene, and sighed. 

  
“He’s here,” she said in a resigned tone, and Caeda silently thanked Ismene for being as persistent as she was. “Go on up.”

  
Caeda tugged Phineas after her. “That was a good impression,” he laughed, but Caeda’s nerves didn’t allow her to laugh back. She knew where Orianus’s office was from a year among the books, so it wasn’t hard to find, but when she knocked it didn’t open right away. 

  
She knocked again, more desperately, and the door swung open. Orianus looked down and his eyes landed on Caeda - Ismene - and everything in him seemed to soften. 

  
“Ismene!” he said in genuine surprise and delight. 

  
“Hello!” Caeda answered. 

  
“Please, step inside. Who’s your friend?” 

  
“Phineas Gale,” Phineas said, and extended his hand for Orianus to shake. 

  
“What can I do for you today?” asked the Cobalt Soul leader. 

  
Caeda didn’t waste any time. She only had an hour, and half the spell was already gone. 

  
“I’d like to use the teleportation circle.” She cocked her head at Phineas. “We have some business in Zadash.” 

  
Orianus’s mouth formed a small “o”, but Phineas picked up on the urgency of the request, because he swept a satchel of coins out of his bag and placed it on the desk. 

  
“We know it’s a bit of a breach, but it’s urgent.” 

  
“Are -are you offering me a bribe?” Orianus stammered. Phineas raised his eyebrows and looked at Caeda, who looked back at Orianus. 

  
“It’s very urgent.” 

  
Orianus narrowed his eyes at them. 

  
“Are you in danger?” 

  
“No,” Caeda said quickly. “Only a time limit.” 

The leader weighed the bag in his hand, then thrust it back at Phineas. “Keep your money. I’ll help you because I like you.” 

  
Caeda’s chest unclenched, and Phineas grinned at her as he took the money back and dropped it in his bag. His smile widened as Orianus swept out of the room, and now he was the one to pull Caeda along. 

  
“Are you enjoying this?” she hissed at him as they walked. 

  
“I’ve never gotten to be part of the action before! It’s not as bad as I thought,” he answered, and squeezed her hand. 

  
Orianus stopped them outside a doorway to a blue circle sketched on the floor, alight with magic. 

  
“Only think where you want to go, and it will take you there,” he instructed them. Caeda nodded. Orianus looked around to make sure the coast was clear, then stepped back to let them through. 

  
“Wait,” Phineas said as they stepped over. “Where do I think to go?”

  
She leaned forward and whispered in his ear, “With Caeda.” 

  
His eyes found hers. “With Caeda,” he whispered, and they stepped into the circle together, hands entwined. 

  
She pulled Phineas close, and shouted, “Thank you!” to Orianus through his arm. 

  
Teleporting was like being pulled in four different directions at the same time. It was uncomfortable and too long, but then they tumbled to the ground and Caeda lost her breath. 

  
There were books here, yes, but different ones. Ones she’d marveled at throughout her childhood, wondering what it was like beyond the stacks they let the public browse. 

  
She sat back on her knees, mouth open, marveling at the cavern of knowledge before her. It was smaller than Rexxentrum, but it was impressive in its individuality. She heard a gasp, and turned to see Phineas on all fours. She rushed to him and righted him. 

  
“Are you all right?” 

  
In response, he lifted a hand to one of her horns. 

  
“You’re you again.” 

  
She touched it. The teleportation circle must have stripped her of her protections.

  
“Shit.” 

  
She went to cast the spell again, but Phineas caught her hand. 

  
“Save your magic.” He looked around the library. Only a few souls wandered, barely noticing who had arrived in the circle. He pulled the hood of her robe up, and circled an arm around her shoulders. “Show me what you want to show me. And do it as you.” 

  
Caeda shivered. She stepped out of the circle. 

  
Zadash was much less lively than Rexxentrum in the night. There were shops she’d gone to as a child, a village square she’d played in, places her parents had stopped and fussed over her appearance. She pressed ahead into the night until she reached the hill. 

  
_We need eggs,_ she thought as she stood atop it, and stared down at the place she’d once called home. It was still ash and ruin, mostly. In a few places, flowers poked through the destruction. She looked at Phineas, hoping the truth was laid plain on her face so she wouldn’t have to say it. She watched him take in the destruction, look back at her, and understanding dawn on his face. There was a plaque at the bottom of the hill. 

  
“Do you want to take me down?”, he asked her gently. 

  
Caeda squared her shoulders and nodded. 

  
He didn’t touch her as they walked. When they reached the plaque, he crouched down and read. 

  
_In memory of the Massacre of East Diasthas._

  
Phineas reached out and trailed a finger over it. 

  
“You - your -” 

  
“Yes.” 

  
He stood up, turned violently on his heel. His clenched fists dug into his palms.

  
“Is that all?” 

  
“No.” 

  
She set off and he followed her. 

  
He followed her down charred paths once full of life and promise and glory for a young elf who wanted nothing more than to please the humans who loved her. She went down that path now, to the house she’d grown up in, the house they’d loved her in. 

  
Where she’d seen their bodies. 

  
Where they’d died because of her. 

  
She stopped in front of the gate. 

  
A year later, there was still ash and dust everywhere. The frame of the house still stood, collapsed in on itself and black. Caeda couldn’t keep the tears from her eyes as she turned her face to Phineas and lightly touched the two hoops in her ears. 

  
His eyebrows knit together and he reached for them, too. 

  
“Your parents?”

  
All Caeda could do was nod. 

  
“They did it?” 

  
Caeda choked. “Not they. He. I-ik-”

  
Phineas finished her words. “Ikithon.” 

  
Caeda’s lip trembled, and Phineas’s arms closed around her. She burst into the sobs she’d held inside for so long. Her fingers clutched Phineas’s shirt as tight as they could. He held her as her body rocked, hands flat against the sharpness of her shoulder blades, his cheek pressing against hers. 

  
“You can cry, Caeda,” he said, soft and gentle and slow. “It’s all right. You don’t have to be strong in front of me.” 

  
So she cried until she couldn’t anymore. When finally she stilled, Phineas lifted her face to his. 

  
“We’ll make them pay,” he said. “That’s a promise.” 

  
She released a heavy breath and stepped away from him. “We have to get back.” 

  
But then he’d pulled her against him again. “No, we don’t. All we have to do is get out of here.” 

  
“My party —” 

  
He jingled the coins in his bag. “We can go tomorrow. You need to rest.” 

  
“They’ll ask. They’ll laugh. They’ll think I’m —” 

  
“Would it be so bad?” He swallowed, hard, and she saw the blush rise in his cheeks. “If they thought you’d spent the night with me?” 

  
Caeda’s mouth fell open, and she opened and closed her mouth as she searched for words. Phineas saw, because he reached out and touched the third hoop in her ear. 

  
“This one.” 

  
“Someone I loved.”

  
“Dead?” 

  
Caeda’s voice cracked. “Probably. I don’t know.” 

  
Phineas drew closer to her. “Do you remember what I told you in Yrrosa?” 

  
Caeda waited. 

  
“If we can’t trust each other, they win.” His lips brushed her ear where the hoops were. “Trust me.” 

  
She pulled away just enough to look into his eyes. “It wouldn’t be so bad.” 

  
Not at all. The very thought of it made Caeda want to smile, a thousand yards wide. 

  
“You don’t have to be afraid of me.”

  
“I’m not afraid of you,” she said with half a laugh. “I’m afraid of _losing_ you.”

  
“In that, we find ourselves matched,” Phineas said in a slow, deliberate tone. “I believe it is worth the risk.” 

  
He held her gaze in the ashen neighborhood. His look said everything - this is what Caeda brought to people. This is what he was risking. 

  
_Yes_ , Phineas was saying. _You showed me and I trust you. Yes._

  
She whispered, “Take me, then.” 

  
Phineas held his hand out. She took it. He laced their fingers together and he didn’t let go as they walked out of the neighborhood. Caeda didn’t look back.  
They found a small inn on the traveler’s road, and the innkeeper didn’t ask any questions when Phineas requested one room or paid with a platinum piece. Inside it was warm, and the bed was large enough for both of them. Phineas removed Caeda’s cloak, but instead of pressing his lips to hers like she expected he would, he sat down on the bed and drew her against his chest. He moved back until they were lying together horizontally, her back against his chest, and he never put his hands anywhere indecent. Caeda felt the hot sting of embarrassment open in her stomach. 

  
“Don't you want to - I - I thought we - I thought you meant -” 

  
In response, Phineas lifted himself on his elbow, and pressed a kiss onto her cheekbone. 

  
“I…I would like to. But not when you’re like this. Rest.” He tucked a lock of hair behind her ear. Caeda lifted a hand to his face, brushed her fingers against his lips. 

  
“How can I rest knowing I’ve put you in the same danger now?” 

“You didn’t put me there. I went there. With you. For you. _With Caeda_. I’m with you.” 

  
Caeda pushed herself up, so her lips barely brushed his. Her heart jolted. 

  
Then she thought of the burned house and it ached again. Phineas drew back, and pulled her against him again. 

  
“Rest,” he said into her ear once more, and it was like a spell. “I’ll be here in the morning.” 

  
Caeda focused on the feeling of Phineas’s hand flat on her stomach as she drifted into her meditative state. She stroked it with her own.   
When soft, heavy breaths on her neck let her know that Phineas had fallen asleep, she spoke what she hadn’t been brave enough to say earlier into the night. 

  
“And I’m with you.” 


	7. As Long As We Want

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> it's time for SMUT

Caeda turned over to watch Phineas sleep. She'd stayed awake all night, her hand on top of his on her stomach. She felt his breath on the back of her neck, and when she stirred he unconsciously pulled her closer. Caeda smiled, and as light only just broke the small window turned over to look at him.

Although he was pale, his skin was still touched by warmth. He had taken off his glasses to sleep, and his eyes looked smaller without them. Everything about him was _warm_ , from the fullness of his cheeks to the waves in his mussed brown hair to the way he still reached for Caeda in sleep. Caeda had expected him to run after the events of the night, but he was here, in front of her, with his eyes closed and his hand tangled in hers. Everything about Phineas said, _Trust me._

Caeda bit her lip. She didn't know if she'd ever really trusted anyone before. Even Davlen she'd always held at arm's length. Even Ismene didn't know the name she used to go by, or what had happened to make her flee the Academy in the first place. 

Phineas knew all but the name. And he was still here. 

It would hurt very much to lose him. But Caeda thought it would hurt even more never to know what it was like to have him in the first place. 

She lifted a hesitant hand to his face, and pushed a strand of hair out of his eyes. He jolted upright at the touch, and Caeda recoiled. Phineas scrambled for his glasses and tried to thrust them on. Instead he poked himself straight in the eye. 

"Ah!" he cried, and Caeda hurried toward him across the bed. 

"Are you all right?" she asked. She took his face in her hands, examining him for injury. At the feeling of her hands on his, Phineas seemed to calm. He looked up at her, and blinked once, again like he was seeing an apparition.

"I'm fine," he said slowly. "I had a nightmare." 

Caeda dropped her hands and sat back on her knees. She'd put him in danger. Of course she had. She - 

Phineas's hand found hers. "Not about you. About books that came to life and grew giant teeth and wanted to eat me." 

A laugh tore itself from Caeda's throat, and Phineas smiled sheepishly back at her. She swallowed. 

"So...you know." 

He nodded. "I know." 

"And you're still here." 

"I told you, I'm with you." 

She smiled at him. He reached for his glasses and this time he managed to put them on with no hassle, then reached up and mussed his hair before he stood and stretched. 

"I half-expected to find you gone in the morning," he admitted with his back turned. Then he faced her, suddenly all business, like the light was somehow revealing more than he wanted. "Well." He glanced at the sheets in disarray on the bed, and red colored his cheeks. "I suppose we should try and find a way to get back to Rexxentrum. We have duties to attend to. People to see." 

Caeda stood. A wave of - of _something_ washed over her. Being outside of this room, away from him, for even one second seemed unbearable. The very thought of it threatened to tear her apart. So she stepped closer and closer to him, until their chests were touching. She lifted a hand to his face and clutched at his shirt with the other. 

"They can wait."

Phineas narrowed his eyes, glanced down at Caeda and then at the bed. His eyebrows shot up, but he didn't back away from her.

"Oh - you mean - right now?" 

In response she kissed him full-on, and although his voice stammered, his lips were firm against hers. His hands rose to her waist immediately, his body responding to hers. Her hands fell from his face to his shirt, pulling him close against her body. She broke away, and then decided she wanted nothing more than to kiss Phineas, that she could kiss Phineas forever and never tire of it, so she pressed her lips against his again and he didn't stop her. When she opened her mouth to let his tongue meet hers, there was a hesitation.

Caeda pulled away from him, checked him up and down. He still held onto her tight. Behind his glasses, his pupils were blown wide. Embarrassment seized her like an iron poker. 

"I haven't made a mistake, have I?" 

"No, no," he reassured her quickly. "I was just...expecting a little more time to prepare, that's all." His face twisted into a grimace. "I'm not entirely inexperienced, but I...I'm no great lover, either." 

"Phineas," Caeda said softly, and kissed him the same way. "I don't care. Besides, neither am I."

"Really?" 

Another kiss. 

"It's been months since I laid with anyone. Do I seem like the kind of person that's easy to get into bed?"

At that he laughed. "Not at all." 

Caeda shrugged off the outer layer of her robes, leaving her pale arms bare in the morning light. She took Phineas's hands and placed them on her waist, then hooked her arms around his neck. 

"You don't have to be afraid of me," she whispered into his ear. "I don't care how you are. I only care that it's you."

Those were the words he must have been searching for, because his body strained against hers and this time he was the one to pull her into a long meeting of lips. Given permission, his hands traced her arms and shoulders, tangled in her short hair, and when she opened her mouth there was no hesitation. He met her with a gentle pull of teeth on her bottom lip. She tugged at his jacket and shirt, and he let her pull them off. 

She stepped backwards, pulling him to the bed, and he smiled as their lips met again and again. 

"Is this --?" 

"Yes," she laughed back. 

He covered her body with his as she lay down, and his hands found her legs under her robes and pushed the blue fabric up until her underthings were exposed. She helped Phineas get her clothes all the way off and cast them to the floor, then helped him do the same with his. A night of their bodies pressed close together had given them each plenty of physical evidence of how much they wanted each other, and both of them took the others' body in, swallowed, then laughed. 

Phineas pressed a soft kiss to Caeda's lips. 

"You're beautiful." 

He trailed further down, until he found her chin, her jaw, her neck. For his claim of inexperience, his hands were finding Caeda in the unattended places she craved touch most. He trailed a finger between her small breasts, down her collarbone, and then his hands dug into the backs of her thighs. She swallowed a gasp when his lips followed. 

Even as he pressed his lips against her bare skin, as he used his mouth on the soft part of her, he still wasn't touching her where she needed it. He danced around the edge, nervous, unsure. 

She lifted his eyes to hers. 

"Can I touch you?" she whispered. 

He nodded. 

She rolled on top of him, and took his skin between her teeth, reached for him with her hands. He sighed into her mouth. She explored the warm skin, leaving marks on his neck, the bottom of his ear, and feeling desire between her fingers. She was ready to lower herself onto him when he stopped her with a kiss. 

"Show me," he said into her neck. "Show me how to make you...like this." 

He smiled as he looked down at himself. 

"I want it to be good for you, Caeda." 

So she kissed him again, because she couldn't remember the last time anybody had taken such care of her. _Trust me, show me,_ Phineas said to her, over and over. So she showed him. She guided his fingers between her legs, and showed him where to touch, and when he went too fast she told him so, or too slow, she told him so. 

Phineas, thankfully, was something of a scholar, and made a study out of Caeda. 

She stopped him when her toes were curling, and gasped, "I'm ready now." 

There was a slide of his body over hers, but instead of pushing in above her, Phineas turned her on her side and pressed a kiss to her neck. 

"Is this all right?" 

"More than all right." 

She reached behind her to guide him, and they breathed in and out together as their bodies joined.

Phineas's hands wrapped around her stomach, his lips pressing into her shoulder. 

"Beautiful, Caeda," he said as he moved in and out of her, lazy and lustful. The speed increased as they went along. Caeda's fingers tangled in his hair, and Phineas's hands held her against him. She threw a hand against the wall to steady her as his movements came faster and harder, and soon they were both moaning, and Caeda and Phineas forgot any of their shyness. They were only hands reaching for each other, only bodies that needed each other. They had been shown to each other and they trusted each other. Caeda's fingers curled around the sheets as Phineas reached a particularly deep spot, but he kept going, and going, and then of his own accord found her with his fingers again. He touched her the way she'd shown him, and with the movement of him behind her and the fingers, her toes curled and she didn't stop him. Her outburst as the feeling swept through her body was probably loud enough that the next room heard it, but she didn't care. It was the sound of her pleasure that made Phineas find his. He stilled. She shivered. 

Slowly, Phineas disentangled himself from Caeda, panting. She rolled over to face him, and pressed two long, hard kisses to his lips. 

"That was..." he started, and Caeda finished, "I know." 

She stroked his bare shoulder with her finger, then kissed it, his cheek, his neck, until she found herself back at his lips. 

"You're a quick learner." 

Phineas smiled at her. "There's no better study than making you happy."

It was her turn to smile. "And what about you?" 

"Oh, I'm glowing. Can't you tell?" 

She ran her fingers through his hair. "I like it. It makes you look good." 

He kissed her. And kissed her again. 

"I think you could teach me more, though. How long did you say Rexxentrum could wait?" 

Caeda thought of her party in the Maiden and the Swan - they probably _would_ assume she was with Phineas. She might as well give some truth to that assumption. And take advantage of this room while they had it. She sat up, and put her legs on either side of the man who'd won her trust against all odds. She didn't want to be anywhere but this room, anywhere away from him. She leaned down, and tried to put all that meaning in a kiss.

"Rexxentrum can wait as long as we want."


	8. Chapter 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> the gang Reacts

Caeda wasn't used to smiling. 

She also wasn't used to someone smiling back.

Sometime in the afternoon, she and Phineas had dressed and left the inn. But when they got to the Cobalt Soul, they'd found the party already there. Caeda, disguised as Ismene, pulled Phineas into the shadows and dropped the spell, and when she was herself again found him staring at her and smiling a grin wider than she'd ever seen. 

"What?" she'd laughed at him, and he'd darted forward and pressed a kiss to her lips. When they parted, he blinked and shook his head.

"I can't believe I get to do that." 

They caught up with the party eventually. They didn't seem too surprised to see Caeda in Zadash. They explained they'd had to leave Rexxentrum because of the trouble with Dorothy and the Myriad, and Orianus had been rather confused when he'd had to teleport Ismene twice in one week. Caeda's own interrogation of her party was, however, swallowed by a long round of questions and teasing and Ismene and Telemniel elbowing Caeda in the side as Phineas's beet red face confirmed the answers to all their questions, Caeda had slowly, simply, subtly, linked her fingers through Phineas's. She squeezed, and he squeezed back. Then Ismene squealed and _attacked._

"Caedaaaaa," she sang, nearly crushing her ribcage. "I was afraid your face was going to freeze up that way and you were never going to smile or be happy again!" Then she wheeled on Phineas. She thrust a small pink finger at his chest. "And you. You'd better watch out! Be nice to her or I'll call some _bad people_ to come and take care of you." 

Phineas's eyes widened as he looked at Caeda. He swallowed, and stammered, "I-I'd never dream of hurting her..." 

Caeda caught his eye, the corner of her mouth lifted into a half-smile, and he seemed to forget about Ismene altogether, and smiled back at her. 

"Whoah," Maggie said. "Caeda's smiling." She whistled low. "That's some man." 

She reached up and clapped Phineas on the back where she could reach him. Caeda felt all their eyes on her suddenly, the truth of what she'd revealed to them. Loving Phineas was a weak spot - one anybody could take advantage of. 

And maybe it's a spot she was willing to risk. But she didn't need them all to know about it. 

"No need to make a fuss about it," she snapped. That made Phineas smile, and then her party was laughing all over again. 

"Come on," she grumbled, and took Phineas's hand. "Let's go find somewhere for us all to sleep in Zadash." 

As she stomped away, she heard Telemniel call, "I don't think you'll be doing much sleeping!" 

Caeda didn't look back. But she didn't let go of Phineas's hand, either. 

They managed to get out of the Cobalt Soul and into the pentamarket without Caeda seeing any of her old classmates. They marched until they reached a fountain Caeda had liked to sit at and read in her childhood. There were enough people around she could disappear if she needed to, but it wasn't an overwhelming crowd. She dropped Phineas's hand, sat down on the rim of the fountain, and huffed. 

He sat down next to her, and lightly touched her back. Caeda buried her head in her hands, and then Phineas's voice was in her ear. 

"Caeda." 

She peeked through her fingers at him. His warm brown eyes were knit with concern, and she knew once again he was only looking at her, that the rest of the bloody pentamarket could have fallen away and he wouldn't even notice. That made Caeda want to take his clothes off all over again. Which, she knew, was exactly why she shouldn't. 

Phineas gently pried her fingers from her face, and stroked her cheek with his thumb. Her heart fluttered, and she shot up. 

"This is a bad idea," she muttered. 

Phineas stood, too, turned her around, and laid her hand on his heart. 

"I don't care." 

She looked up at him from under drawn eyebrows. 

"We met because you were so afraid you needed an _escort._ And you know what they did to me." 

"That's exactly why I'm not afraid any more," Phineas rushed to respond. "What I had before was...well, a cause, and nothing but. I have a fine house, plenty of money. I was risking my life for something that wasn't solid." When he said this, his fingers found their way into Caeda's hair, then traced down her face, curling against her collarbone. She had to remind herself to breathe. "I would never presume to say I _have_ you, but I can tell you..." 

He broke off, swallowed. Caeda wanted to hear the answer, but she was terrified. She stepped away. Her body where he'd touched her seemed alight with fire. 

"Don't say it here," she instructed him. "They'll hear you." 

Phineas looked around, incredulous. "Who?" 

She made a sweeping gesture at the people dotting the scene. "Everyone." 

Phineas held her gaze for a long moment, working the equation in his mind. Caeda wanted to look away, but she couldn't. He was so...comfortable, so reassuring. She wanted to kiss him forever. She couldn't. 

His gaze softened, and he sat down on the rim of the fountain again, and raised his eyebrows at her to sit next to him. She huffed, but she did. This time he made no effort to touch her, keeping his palms clasped firmly in his lap. When he spoke, it was soft. 

"Your lover from before," he said with a glance at her ear. "It was a secret, wasn't it?" 

Caeda confirmed it with a glance. 

"You've never been with someone publicly? Not even before them?"

She snorted. "I'd had sex." 

"Not sex. Public favor. Like you could look at somebody and tell the person you were talking to at a party that was your..." He trailed off, searching for words, but Caeda shrugged.

"I was always too busy studying." 

Phineas reached for the bottom hoop in Caeda's ear, then stopped himself. 

"And at the...school...of course it had to be a secret." 

He shook his head, hair still mussed from Caeda's fingers, and when he looked at her out of the corner of his eyes, they were playful and he was biting down a smile. 

His smile pulled hers out of her no matter how hard she tried to stuff it down. 

"What?" She tried to sound irritated, but she didn't think she succeeded. 

"My parents always told me this took work, but I never believed them. It seems it was the one thing they were right about."

He edged just a bit closer to her on the fountain.

"Now," he dropped his voice, "considering what we just spent the better half of a day doing, I think it's safe to say you like me. Am I wrong?" 

"You're not wrong." 

"Considering the fact you only got like this once we reunited with your party, I think it's also safe to say I'm not the problem. It's only somebody else knowing." Now he turned to her, earnest eyes, open body, straining toward her as much as he could. "What are you afraid of, Caeda?" 

The truth spilled out of her. She was understanding that Phineas did that to her. Made her feel like a light was being shone on all her dark places. 

"I don't want them to know they can hurt me. I don't want them to know _you_ can hurt me. I want to be...unbreakable." 

Phineas touched Caeda's hoops, and brought his face close to hers. 

"But you're not." 

"But I _want_ to be." 

"Have you ever considered that a man who takes on too much weight alone will collapse, but distributed across ten men the journey is finished?" 

Caeda had considered it many times. But King Dwendal had taken her ten men, in the end. 

Well.

Except for Ismene. Except for Telemniel and Dorothy and yes, even Maggie. 

Except for Phineas.

Who was still here. Who she'd shown exactly what they' done, who understood the risks, and was still here. 

"I'm just...afraid," she admitted with a heavy sigh. "I'm afraid all the time. Of the Empire, of being found, of my friends finding out, and how they would look at me. I'm afraid this will change how they look at me now."

"It's not a bad thing to admit you have feelings." Phineas sounded almost offended, but then he looked her in the eyes again and softened. He scuffed the ground with his shoe. "Trust me. That feeling you're having, like you're about to jump off a high building to ground you can't see? It's much better than feeling nothing at all." 

Caeda narrowed her eyes. She knew Phineas was from high society, but she hadn't considered the implications. Had he been raised to be bought and bred like a fine horse? Paraded around to the highest bidder? The look on his face said as much, but he confirmed it with his words. 

"My parents shoved me at suitable matches, and that's all they were. Suitable. Passable. Fine. They weren't like this." He'd inched even closer to Caeda subconsciously. Now their arms brushed, and the hair on his seemed to stand from the electricity. "It feels dangerous because it is. So I understand why you want to hide. But Caeda?" 

He turned his head to her, full of hope and uncertainty. There was a question on his face deeper than the ones they'd asked and answered with their bodies in the small inn. 

"Haven't you had enough of shadows?"

Caeda chewed her lip as she looked at him. _Warm._

She didn't know what it was about Phineas that made her feel safer. He wasn't un-muscled, but he wasn't strong. He was no sorcerer, a head for equations and studies more than strategy. He probably didn't even know how to use a knife. But she looked at him and she felt like if she jumped, he would be there to catch her.

Her reply came slowly. "I suppose I have, at that." 

He smiled. 

She smiled.

Phineas turned his palm over. Caeda placed her hand in it. 

"We can go little-by-little," he said. 

But Caeda was filled with such light for the man who'd won her trust in such a short amount of time she found herself leaning forward and kissing him full on the mouth in the middle of the square instead. She finished and then she kissed him again. 

"No," she breathed. "It's nice to be in the light."

It did feel like jumping off a building, a bit. But she felt Phineas's hands rise to her face, holding her steady, and she thought if she had to jump from anywhere, she wanted it to be with him. So they sat on the fountain kissing, for the pentamarket to see. For her former classmates or childhood friends or King Dwendal or even Ikithon himself to see, if he happened to be there. As Caeda pressed her lips to Phineas's again and again and thought jumping off a building didn't seem so bad if it was with him, she smiled, because she understood. 

They had tried to take everything from her. They had tried to break her. 

But they couldn't break her at all if she could still feel like this.


	9. it's canon baby!

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> the canon version of caeda x phineas lmao

Caeda trusted Phineas with her whole heart except for in one thing: defending himself. 

It was why she disguised herself and pulled her hood up to follow him into the pentamarket. She watched Phineas stop and chat to a merchant here, another there, smiling at his smile, the way he was so easy among the society. He'd come with her, she bit her lip as she remembered. Put himself in danger for her. She'd never had someone be so openly on her side before. 

Her heart seemed to warm as she watched him from the shadows, and then - 

A cloak pulled him aside. A few words were exchanged and Phineas's face went slack. _Magic._ Caeda darted forward, still disguised as her human self. The cloak turned, and Caeda saw the face and stumbled back. 

Blue eyes. She couldn't see the hair under the cloak, but there was no mistaking him. 

Davlen. 

Davlen, who was supposed to be dead. Supposed to be buried underneath the same ash her parents were under. There was a hoop in her ear for him. 

He released Phineas, and disappeared into the crowd. Caeda dropped her disguise, and rushed to the man who'd followed her home. 

"Are you all right?" 

She found his hand, held him up as he blinked at her. 

"I - I - it was him," he stammered to Caeda, and shook his head as if a fog was clearing from it. 

"What do you mean him?" 

"The student I told you about. The one who came to me for help. From -" Phineas glanced around and lowered his voice. "From the Academy." 

Two threads knit together in Caeda's mind. Davlen had asked her not to follow him. She'd always assumed that meant he was going to do whatever Ikithon asked. That _he_ ' _d_ burned her house, and himself with it. What could be more terrible than causing that much pain to the person you loved?

She looked at Phineas - shaking and blinking behind the glasses, but still when she looked at him all she felt was _warm_. She recalled his arm next to hers in the wagon on the way to Rexxentrum, his earnest but open invitation to his room at his house, the way he hadn't hesitated at all when she'd told him they were in danger and had to leave. And yet this was also the person who had, however unwittingly, played a small part in costing her Davlen. 

Caeda took a deep breath. 

"You remember I wanted to show you something in Rexxentrum?" 

Phineas nodded silently. 

"Well. I can show you something here too." 

She cast a glance behind her, and an understanding settled over Phineas. He nodded. Caeda set off. 

They walked until they reached a plaque. _In memory of the massacre of East Diasthas._ Caeda ran a finger over it, took a shaky breath, and steeled her shoulders. She stopped long enough to let Phineas read the plaque, and looked at him out of the corner of her eyes. Now he was shaking, too. She let him shake, then cocked her head to follow her. 

The steps seemed heavier as she went. The rubble and the bodies were gone, but the shell of the house still stood. She stopped outside and wiped a tear from her eyes. When she felt Phineas's heat at her side, she whispered, "This where I used to live. Where I grew up." 

Phineas turned his whole body towards Caeda. Opened and closed his mouth. "I -" 

"The man you saw earlier? The one from the Academy? I knew him. Well. Do you understand?" 

Phineas closed his mouth into a thin line. "I think I do." 

She showed him her ear - three hoops. One with a black jewel on top, another with a blue jewel underneath. At the very bottom, one in plain gold. Caeda brushed a finger over all of them. "These are for them." 

She waded away from the house, as if in a daze, to a grassy hill across the street. Once there had been a garden here, she remembered. She sat down on it heavily. Phineas sat next to her and ever so lightly brushed his fingers over hers. 

"I can't imagine." 

Caeda buried her face in her hands. Davlen - who she'd loved so much. The only reason she'd made it from the Academy alive. She hadn't _known_ they killed him, but she'd thought - surely - he was either dead, or he would kill her on sight. That's what Ikithon did to people. 

"I thought he was dead," she whispered into her hands. She felt a hesitant arm snake around her back. In response she buried her head into Phineas's shoulder and when he lifted a hand to stroke her hair, she didn't push him away. 

"Caeda," he said to her. "Could we...could we help him?" 

She stood abruptly. 

"If they have him...he's beyond help. Don't you see what they did to _me?_ " 

She gestured at the charred house behind her. 

"They'll have tortured him. Made him so he'll bend to the will of the Empire one way or another." She fought the nausea in her stomach at the thought of it. "And if he knows _I'm_ here...What we should do is hide, and get out of here as quickly as possible." 

Phineas swallowed. But then he nodded and let Caeda drag him back to the Cobalt Soul. After a hasty yet well-done disguise job from Maggie, Telemniel stopped Caeda and hissed, "What exactly is going on?" 

Caeda hissed back, "There are some people in the world who would love nothing more than to kill me, and they've seen Phineas, so it's become something of a priority to _not be seen."_

Telemniel and Dorothy shared a glance, then backed away from the disguised Phineas, who was looking around hopelessly without his glasses, and Caeda, frazzled and on edge. 

"Come _on_ ," said Caeda, and, pulling her hood over her head, led them away from the pentamarket, into the stretches of Zadash where people knew not to ask questions. They found a tavern that was more interested in gold than decency and paid extra to not be remembered. They were given three rooms, and after a brief questioning in which Caeda confirmed that yes, she was, in fact, being hunted, Telemniel, Dorothy, and Maggie escaped to the room next door. Before she left, Phineas piped up to Maggie, "Can I have my glasses back?" 

Maggie smiled a rueful smile. "I was hoping you wouldn't remember." 

But she handed them back anyways.

They left the room ajar, and Phineas stood, righted himself, and reached for the door, but Caeda beat him to it and closed it, locking him in. His cheeks colored. 

"Oh." 

Caeda rolled her eyes. "You quite literally know my darkest secret. I hardly think sharing a room is the most intimate thing we can do." 

Phineas sat back down. "I suppose you're right, at that." 

"Phineas," Caeda said. "Do you know how to defend yourself at all? Not that it makes me like you any less...but you don't strike me as the type of person who gets into fights often." 

He raised his eyebrows. "No, you're...correct." 

"You don't know how to do any magic? You don't have a weapon?" 

Phineas looked down on his person, more pensive than anything. "I probably should get a knife." 

He was talking to himself, not to Caeda, but it was enough time for her to rummage in her sack and hold one of her daggers out to him. 

"Here," she said. "I have an extra." 

Gingerly, Phineas accepted it from her, and held it so it was pointing straight at his stomach. Caeda bit back a smile. Her hand closed over his gently and she pointed it away from his stomach. 

"Well," she said. "Lesson one. Never, ever, ever point something that could kill you at yourself." 

Phineas glanced at the dagger, then back at Caeda, and broke into a sheepish grin. 

"That's a fair point." 

She walked him through a few parries and maneuvers, basics in a fight. He listened to her with rapt attention, and when they finished he said, "You're a good teacher, Caeda." 

She remembered why they were in the room in the first place and it was like all the breath had been knocked out of her. She looked at Phineas, sitting on the bed with hands on his knees, tall and warm, and was overcome with a wave of wanting, followed by a wave of guilt. 

Davlen was _here._ Davlen was _alive_. 

She thumbed her dagger. 

"I have to step outside," Caeda announced. Phineas half-rose in alarm. 

"What? Are you alright?" 

"Yes," she laughed. "I'm fine. It's just...a lot has happened today. I need some air, that's all." 

Phineas reached for her hand. She let him take her fingers gently in his, find her pale eyes with his warm ones. 

"Are you sure?" 

"Yes." She gave him a smile that she hoped let him know what she was feeling in her heart - warm, safe. "I'll be right back, I promise." 

Phineas searched her face, and finding nothing contentious in it, dropped Caeda's hand. "All right. Be careful." 

"I will." 

She swept down the stairs and into the cool night of Zadash. She waited for a moment, then composed a simple, single message: _Are you there_? 

She sent it on a Whisper, not knowing what she was hoping for. 

She waited. 

One breath. 

Two breaths. 

Three breaths. 

Caeda's heart sank. She turned back around. Maybe it had been someone who only _looked_ like Davlen. Or maybe they were playing tricks on her. Whatever the case, he wasn't coming.

He would never come. 

There was a flicker of movement in the corner of her eye. Caeda turned, and caught her breath. 

His hood was still up, but there was no denying who was under that hood. She had held that face, kissed those lips, too many times to count. She swallowed, and with a glance over her shoulder and then back at the inn, stole into a dark alleyway far away enough for Davlen not to notice the inn and close enough she could run to it if she had to. 

She drew her staff.

He drew his. 

They faced off for a long, tense moment. 

Caeda was the first to speak. 

"I thought you were dead." 

It was all she could think to say, the only thought in her head. Davlen lowered his staff slightly. 

"I thought _you_ were dead." 

Caeda took a step toward him. 

"Are you...are you with them?" 

As Davlen looked at her, his face slackened. 

"Am I...where else is there to be?" 

"Here," she said. " _Here_. I'm here." 

She reached a hand out to him, slowly, like she was touching an easily spooked cat. But Davlen didn't back away from her touch. Caeda watched her fingers grasp his arm. Davlen's eyes fluttered open and closed. When he didn't move again, she reached another hand to his face and brushed the hair out of his eyes. It had been poorly dyed dark, and it was clear from his face he hadn't slept in - perhaps weeks. 

"Davlen," she said in a cautious, measured tone. "You don't look good." 

He stiffened under her touch. She stiffened back. But then he relaxed, and covered her hand on his cheek with his own. 

"What did they do to you?" Caeda whispered. 

His eyes blinked open. A rapid flash of blue - to this side and then that. They landed on her, pale in the moonlight, and widened. Davlen grasped her by the shoulders. 

"Vestele - " the use of her old name made Caeda whip her head around to see if anyone was watching, but then Davlen's fingers were digging into her shoulders, eyes wide and frantic. "Are you here? Is it real?" He took a lock of her hair in his fingers like it was a hint. "Are you real?" 

"Yes," Caeda confirmed, and took his face in her hands again. "I'm here. I'm real. I'm -" 

"They told me you were dead," he said. "They told me you were dead and it was my fault and this was my punishment. And I --" 

"I'm not dead," Caeda interrupted. "I thought you were, thought. I thought they would have killed you by now." 

"Not while I'm still useful." Davlen laughed a humorless laugh. 

"Do you need help?"

Davlen released Caeda and stepped back. 

"What makes you say that?" 

"The man you saw in the marketplace today..."

"You know him?" Davlen's eyes grew wider, then narrower at once. "How do you know him?" 

"Yes," Caeda said, her heart beating out of her chest. "I know him. He's...somebody I met through a random coincidence. A friend, that's all." 

Davlen's eyes narrowed again. He studied Caeda, but if he could see the heat rising in her cheeks or the way her fingers were burning where Phineas had touched her earlier or how all she was thinking about was how to keep him out of harm's way, he didn't betray anything. Instead he sighed.

"I wouldn't call it _asking_ , but I did try and get him to help me." 

So she'd been right. A compulsion spell. 

She reached for Davlen one more time. This time, he let her wrap both arms around him fully, and he shuddered into her hair. 

"I got out, you know. I can help you." 

"Vestele..." 

She disentangled herself from Davlen enough to look up at him. 

"What did they tell you? There's no other option? Look at me. _I'm not dead._ Let me help you, Davlen. Please." 

Davlen closed his eyes, and pressed his forehead against Caeda's. 

"Do you promise you're real?" 

"I promise." 

He folded her into his arms again, so strange and yet so familiar. 

"Have you gotten any better at being a wizard?" she asked, her mouth muffled against his clothes. A rusty, low laugh escaped him in a way that told Caeda this was not a man used to laughing. 

"A bit." 

"Meet me at the pentamarket tomorrow at midnight. If you can, send me a message. I don't want anyone to hear my voice. Remember, I can help you." 

Davlen pulled back to look Caeda in the eye, as if affirming she was there one last time. 

"Pentamarket. Midnight. I'll be there." 

Perhaps it was to remind herself he was still there, one last hoop in her ear she didn't need, but Caeda squeezed him tight one more time. He squeezed back.

"For what it's worth, I'm really glad you're not dead." 

Davlen stepped away from her, then pressed a dry, chaste kiss to her cheek. 

"Me, too.:"

He disappeared into the night. 

Caeda turned back to the inn. She'd never been more sure of what she wanted to do in her life. 

* 

Phineas sprang up off the bed when Caeda shut the door behind her. He looked her up and down, noticing her stricken expression. 

"Are you all right?" 

She nodded, and closed the space between them. He didn't back up when she got too close to him. Nor did he object when her fingers snaked up his shirt, onto his shoulders, into his hair, and then she pulled his mouth to hers. Phineas kissed Caeda like he was breathing air for the first time. 

Caeda wanted to sink her teeth into him, but Phineas suddenly broke away, holding her at arm's length. 

"Wait," he gasped. "So much has happened today. Are you sure about this?" 

Caeda reached for him again, but he put a hand on her shoulder. cupped her chin with the other, and looked her square in the eye. 

"Caeda. I want this. I want this more than you could possibly imagine. I've wanted it for days, weeks, now, but I...I don't want to be a distraction." 

Caeda laughed. "You are the only person in the world who knows my darkest secret. How could you be a distraction?" But she noticed how Phineas was holding her, keeping her body away from his, and took a step back. "But," she rectified,"we don't have to do anything if you don't want to." 

"I _want_ to," Phineas reassured her with no hesitation. "God, it's all I've been thinking about for weeks. But I...with what you showed me today, and the man..." 

"We could help him," Caeda offered quietly. 

"I thought you said he was beyond saving." 

Caeda glanced at Phineas out of the corner of her eye. "Well. What if he wasn't? I...I knew him very well." 

Something in Phineas's gaze darkened. Caeda faced him, hands at her sides. She was open to him. Heart, body, soul. When she'd been in Davlen's arms, she'd been terrified. Terrified he would ask something of her she didn't want to give. Or try and snap her neck at any moment. In fact, there wasn't a single time she'd been with Davlen she hadn't been terrified to the very core of her. And she couldn't remember a single time she'd been afraid of Phineas, or felt less safe with him there, if only because she knew, somehow, he'd walk into hell for her. He would hold her secrets, and accept her in spite of them. Follow her to the site of her worst memories and hold her while she cried. _That's_ what Caeda wanted. That's what she'd known when Davlen had pulled her into him earlier. 

Trust. Safety. 

Another, more dangerous word. 

There was a flash of a library, clothes on the floor, words whispered against Caeda's lips. She spoke to Phineas's back.

"You do understand the nature of my relationship with him, right?" 

Phineas turned his back on Caeda. Flexed his hands. 

"Oh." 

Her arms moved before she did, reaching for Phineas, wanting to communicate with him in ways her body couldn't. Phineas didn't stop her. She threaded her fingers through his, and wheeled him around to face her. 

"Don't you understand? I saw him when I went outside earlier. We can help him." 

"You saw him?!" Phineas seized her, checking her all over for signs of damage. 

"I'm fine," Caeda reassured him. "I told him to meet us tomorrow, at midnight, at the pentamarket. You can help him. I can help him. We can set something right." 

Phineas stepped away from Caeda again. "I...I see." 

"Phineas -" she reached for his hand, but he jerked it away. Caeda felt like a mountain inside of her might crumble.

"Do you still care for him?" 

Phineas's voice was hoarse. 

So was Caeda's, when she answered. 

"Do I - of course I care for him. But don't you understand, you can love someone and not be _in love_ with them? We were so important to each other. I'll always care for him. And I want to help him. But..." 

Phineas faced Caeda. Everything unsure was gone from his manner. He looked at her eyes, at her lips, back at her eyes again. 

"I want this, Caeda. I want you. More than I've ever wanted anything. I want you with my whole heart in a way I've never wanted anything before." 

He stepped close to her. He raised a hand to her cheek. The other found her waist and drew her flush against him. 

"You're not in love with him?"

Caeda shook her head no. 

And it was true. 

Safe. She felt safe with Phineas. Not because he was strong or talented or clever, but because he looked at Caeda and she knew that he saw her in a way nobody else did, and he didn't go running away from her. 

"We'll meet him tomorrow, then," he affirmed. 

Caeda was having a hard time focusing on anything but how close Phineas was to her, but she managed to force out, "When I was with him, it made everything more clear. About what I want." Her fingers snaked to the Phineas's collar, finding the soft hair at the base of his neck. " _Who_ I want." 

That was what Phineas needed to bring his mouth crashing to Caeda's again. And, Caeda thought as they fumbled their way to the bed, if Phineas wanted her with his whole heart, he wasn't prepared for how much her heart wanted him in return. 


	10. Are You?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> davlen's POV of seeing caeda
> 
> my DM is hiding things from me so this is not canon but it's what i imagine

Davlen saw things. 

That's what they told him. Over and over. While he screamed in pain, buckled to the floor, nails digging into stone. 

He bled. 

Oh, how he bled for them. 

He'd done things. Killed people. Tortured them. And he never said a word about it. 

What did it matter? There was no life for Davlen, not after Vestele. 

They had taken him to the burned village, showed him the shell of her house with her parents' bodies black and twisted across. She'd told him how much she loved them on one of their library nights. Whispered it into his ear like he was the only person in the world that mattered. He wanted to be the only person in the world that mattered to her. 

"Do you see what happens when you disobey, Davlen?" his keepers had said as he dropped to his knees. He hadn't been able to stop the tears then. They'd put hooks in his skin for it later. 

"She's in there somewhere," said the keeper's cruel, cold voice. "Because of you." 

And Davlen believed them. He'd warned Vestele, and she'd stolen away in the dead of night. The scandal had rocked the Academy for weeks. 

_My fault_ , he thought every time he walked through the burned neighborhood in Zadash at night. He brushed a finger over his lips for her. He didn't cry anymore, but his heart ached and ached for her. 

Davlen had been a lonely child. He was an only child, more of a farmhand than a son to his parents, so when the mage had come and invited him to the Academy, of course he'd said yes. 

If only he'd known. 

He was a better wizard now. But he wasn't sure if he was a better person. 

The last good thing he remembered was Vestele. 

He thought he saw her sometimes, but then it was only a flash of blonde hair or pale skin, and he remembered that he was alone. His parents were dead. 

He'd done that for them. 

Davlen didn't speak to the other Volstruckers. He ate in small shops, stayed in seedy inns. He was a servant, they told him before he screamed, and he had failed his empire in letting Vestele go. 

He thought about it every day. He wanted to bring her back. He wanted to run away with her. She was the only thing he remembered. The only thing he loved. 

He remembered the man in the market, though. The last night he'd seen Vestele in the library, he hadn't gone straight to Ikithon. He'd stopped first, to talk to somebody associated with an organization called the Locksmiths. And he'd begged. 

" _Help_ me."

He'd tugged at skirts and trousers, thrown himself in front of them. 

"They'd kill me if they even knew I was here." 

"That," said the woman as she stood, "is exactly why we cannot risk it." The man had looked crestfallen, but he hadn't said anything.

But here Davlen was, years later, and there the man was. He was being followed, and oblivious to it. A human Davlen didn't recognize was tailing him. 

There wasn't time to ruminate on what to do. Davlen plunged into the crowd, and grasped the man by the arm. There was a widening of his brown eyes in recognition, and then Davlen whispered the compulsion spell he'd gotten to know well from the many times it had been cast on him. 

"You will take me to the key," he muttered, like he'd been told, and then, in a desperate act, added, "And you'll help me."

The man's face went slack, and Daven felt an inner surge of triumph. He could do magic, he could serve the empire. That was all he was good for. That was why he'd survived. 

Somebody darted through the crowd. The human following the man was reaching for his arm - her face contorted into worry. Davlen didn't need to be caught here today, not when his keepers were watching, so he released the man, knowing he'd come to him later, and faded into the crowd. He looked over his shoulder as he disappeared, and thought he saw a flicker, and the human stumbled back. There was a flash of recognition, and then she turned, and the man had caught her and Davlen thought he saw her morph into a pale pallid elf.

 _Vestele_. 

She was reaching for the man's hand, for his face, clearly so worried about him she looked like she was going to be sick. 

Davlen ran straight into a lamppost. When he looked back over his shoulder, she was gone. 

***

It was easy enough to track the man. Davlen had a spell. 

To the Cobalt Soul, then out of it. 

She held his hand all the way. 

Davlen's stomach was flipping over itself, his heart pounding in a way it hadn't in years. 

And underneath it, what the empire had burned into him. 

_Your fault. Kill. Torture. Maim. Your fault._

He didn't feel that as he followed the group back to the inn, though - the elf with her hood pulled up, the man, disguised well in body but not in soul, a halfling, another pallid elf, and a human. An odd group, he mused, as if he was himself again. He waited in an alleyway outside the inn for an hour. Two hours. 

There was a fountain in the square. He tossed a coin into it. 

Then there was a Whisper. 

_Are you there?_

Davlen froze. 

He closed his mouth. Opened it. 

He wanted to scream. He wanted to cry. He wanted to run to her and kiss her and take her far away from this place, from the man who hadn't helped him. He wanted to turn her into his keepers and shout over her fallen body. 

Davlen blinked. He shook his head. 

Vestele was dead. 

Wasn't she? 

He stepped out of the shadows, and pulled his hood back. 

He swayed on his feet as he looked at her. Solid, pale in the dark, dressed in blue Cobalt Soul robes and - and _real._ Wasn't she real? Wasn't she _alive_? '

She blinked at him, then glanced at the inn, and something troubled passed over her face. Without a word, she moved in front of him, striding to the alleyway he'd just stepped out of. She stopped a safe distance away, and drew a staff, wielding it in front of her. But that's not what her face was full of. Was it?

"I thought you were dead," she said. Did she? 

Her voice was as warm and full and deep as he remembered it. Did he remember it? 

"I thought _you_ were dead," he said back. He shook his head. She looked healthy. Strong. Not like him. He didn't sleep anymore, his diet was ale and bread and empire. His voice cracked. "They told me you were dead." 

Vestele's eyes were tearing. "Are you - are you with them?" 

He blinked. Shook his head. He was hearing things. Seeing things. Davlen saw things. 

"They told me you were dead - that it was my punishment, that I'd caused it -" 

Warmth on his arm. Vestele laid a hand on him, frightened, light, still wielding her staff like Davlen might hurt her. He would never hurt her. He wanted to press her up against the alley wall and feel her lips on his again, he wanted to plunge his fingers under her robes and love her, he wanted to choke her until she could never breathe again - 

"Davlen?" her voice pulled him back to the alleyway. Her pale eyes were wide, looking up at him, her face devoid of all the coolness he'd liked about her at the Academy. 

He touched her fingers with his. Solid. Real. 

"Vestele," he whispered. "Are you real?" 

"Yes," she said. "I'm real. I'm alive." She reached a hand to his cheek. "You don't look good." 

"You promise you're real?" 

"I promise." She released a breath. "What have they done to you?" 

Davlen closed his eyes and felt Vestele's hand work its way from his arm to his shoulder, against his cheek. He leaned into the touch. Nobody had touched him without hurting him in so long. Vestele hadn't touched him in so long. He never needed to eat again if she could touch him like this every day. She was all he'd ever needed. 

"Davlen," she said to him, and his name was like a song, like a prayer - in her voice, he mattered. "What did you say to the man in the marketplace earlier?" 

He remembered a pale hand gripping the man's, the way the human had darted forward with such concern. A disguise, he surmised. She'd always been good at those. His grip on her tightened. 

"The...the man."

"He said you asked him for help. What did you ask him for?" 

Davlen blinked. Vestele was here. He was holding Vestele. _Vestele. My fault. Vestele. My fault._

"There's...I asked him for help."

"For help with what?"

"You're traveling with a friend...with a key..." 

Vestele fell away from him. He felt colder than he'd ever felt. He needed to be touching her again. He needed her to be real. Was she real? 

"What key?" 

_My fault._

"If you could just...give me the key..." 

"Davlen." 

_My fault._

He looked at Vestele again. She was older - of course she was. Her hair was shorter than it had been at the Academy, and she had three gold hoops in her ear now, and one in her nose. She was still slim, but not the way she'd been at the Academy, bones and bags under her eyes. Davlen would know. How many times had he moaned into her shoulder, taken the skin of those now-full lips in his? Now she looked healthy and strong. She glanced at the inn again, and worry slid over her face. 

His insides twisted. 

"The man...who is he?" 

Vestele swallowed. Her face went devoid of emotion. That was another thing she'd been good at. He never really knew what she was thinking. When he'd told her he loved her, he hadn't expected her to say it back. 

But she had. 

"He's...somebody I ran into. A friend, that's all." 

Davlen frowned. The hand on his, all the way to the inn. The way she'd started forward in the crowd and caught him. Davlen _knew_ Vestele. He _trusted_ Vestele. Vestele was the only person he trusted. Vestele was here, and alive, and real. 

Wasn't she real?

"All right," he acquiesced. 

"I can help you," she said, and reached for his face again. "Let us help you." 

"Us?" 

"My...friends and I," she swallowed. Then, before he knew it, she had snaked her arms under his and drawn him into an embrace. He rested his head against her hair and held her and breathed her scent in and he knew she was _real_. She was real and Davlen wanted to kiss her until he forgot how to do anything else. He wanted to squeeze her until her ribcage burst and she was screaming for him to stop. _My fault_. He wanted to know every inch of her, forever, and wanted her to know him, and never to go anywhere else or know anyone else, because he loved this woman, and she was all he needed in the world. 

  
"Have you gotten any better at being a wizard?" she mumbled into his shoulder. She shuddered against him, the weight of her words too much. 

He laughed. It was rusty. He didn't laugh much nowadays. 

"Yes." 

"Send me a Whisper, all right?" She leaned her head back to look at him, arms still around him. He looked at her lips. He wanted to kiss her again. "I don't want anyone to hear my name," she explained further, and Davlen looked back at her eyes. They were wide. She was afraid. He knew what Vestele looked like when she was afraid. 

"All right," he agreed. He would go anywhere she asked him to. He would do anything she asked him to. He would do anything they asked him to. 

Vestele squeezed him once more. 

"I'm _really_ glad you're not dead, for what it's worth." 

He laughed again. "Me, too." 

She disentangled herself, and before he could stop himself, he'd leaned forward and pressed his lips to her cheek. Her skin was solid. Warm. _She was real._ She was real. 

"Until tomorrow," she said, and Davlen nodded and watched her walk back to the inn. 

His heart was pounding too loud. He saw things. He saw things, but Vestele was real. Vestele was _real._

Was she?


	11. morning after

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> hehe

Caeda woke before Phineas. He'd turned onto his stomach at some point in the night, but still a hand reached across the bed toward her. She pushed herself up on one elbow and felt the pads of his fingers with hers. He looked so peaceful asleep, and her stomach did a funny little flip as she looked down on him and smiled. Carefully, so as not to rouse him, she rose and changed into the plain clothes she'd brought. Before she stepped out of the room, she leaned down and kissed Phineas softly on the forehead. 

He stirred, but didn't wake, and she smiled again. 

A quick disguise spell and Caeda was in the streets of Zadash on a mission. She walked quickly through the morning rush, dodging vendors and children on their way to school. She only looked over her shoulder once before sighting what she was looking for: her favorite dampfnudel stall. It was still here, manned by the same grumpy halfling woman, and Caeda's heart lifted when she handed over the money for two portions. It was such a normal thing to do. 

Not a library floor, no whispers, no fear. 

They hadn't had to be quiet in the night - and they weren't. The first time had been a bit awkward - they were both nervous, both out of practice, but then they found the want and it had disappeared. It hadn't been a problem the second or third time either, and when Phineas had finally fallen asleep with his arms around her, all Caeda had thought about was how nice it was to be loud if she wanted. 

She closed the door gently behind her when she got back to the inn, dropped her disguise, and sat down on the edge of the bed. Phineas blinked sleepily and reached for his glasses. She watched the blanket fall off his chest with appreciation, then flushed at the memory of what they'd done in the night and looked down. 

"I got breakfast," she said quickly. 

Phineas ran a hand through his tousled hair, took the bag she was carrying from her, and smiled.

"I love dampfnudel."

Caeda brightened. "Me, too." 

But he didn't eat it right away. Instead he set it aside, leaned toward her, took her face in both hands, and kissed her, long and deep. He pulled away and kissed her nose. 

"Good morning." 

Caeda didn't have to hide how wide her smile was. She let Phineas pull her onto the bed and nestled into the crook of his arm as he handed her her serving of dampfnudel. They ate in companionable silence, sharing a look and a smile once every few minutes, and when they were finished, Phineas kissed her again. And again, and again, until she was laughing and batting him away. 

She trailed a hand down his shoulder as she looked up at him. He tilted her chin up and asked, "What do you want to do today?" 

Everything from the previous night came crashing down on her. 

Davlen in the alleyway, his hair, his eyes, the way he'd looked at her like he didn't believe she was real. 

She sat up and pulled away from Phineas, who reached for her and turned her face back to his. His eyebrows were drawn, his face sincere and full of nothing but concern for her.

"What's wrong?" 

"Nothing's wrong," she reassured him, and sighed. She leaned her head on his shoulder, and his arm circling to support her felt like the most natural thing in the world. "And that's what's so strange. I'm so used to something being wrong."

Phineas stroked her back. 

"I'm nervous about tonight," she admitted. 

"Caeda," he said carefully. "Have you thought about telling your friends?" 

She pulled away and stood up. "I don't know. I've gotten so angry at them for putting _me_ in danger. I don't want them to think differently of me." 

Phineas followed her. He walked more confidently now. He knew her, in more ways than one. He circled his arms around her waist and tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. 

"I'm sure they won't think differently of you at all."

"But they don't know I escaped -"

"Caeda, you _survived._ " 

She swallowed. 

"You really think it will be okay if I tell them?" 

Phineas nodded. "They're your friends. They'll understand. And I'll be here, no matter what they say." 

His face was so earnest, so trusting. Emotion swelled in Caeda, and she kissed him again. And again. He sank down to the bed, and she followed, only breaking apart to breathe every once in a while. 

"This is what I want to do today," she said in between kisses. "Nothing but this." 

Phineas grinned. "It sounds like the perfect day to me."


	12. Follow Me

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> in which everybody has Complicated Feelings

Caeda put her head on Phineas’s shoulder. The wagon bumped.   
He made no effort to pull her close again.   
She studied his face. It was blank - carefully so, but still she saw his lips turned down slightly. She swallowed, and slid her eyes to Rainor. Telemniel’s brother had good skin. Soft hands. The sort of face that said he had money, an air of affected responsibility around him. He reminded her a bit of Phineas, without the guilt.   
Phineas as he used to be.   
Phineas, before he’d met Davlen.   
Caeda swallowed, and leaned her head against the wagon.   
That night, while she and her party were around the bonfire discussing the secrets that had been brought to air about the humble-looking blacksmith who had no idea what the tiefling was pulling him into, a message settled into Caeda’s mind.   
_Are you alive?_  
She knew his voice like she knew an old robe. She knew it so well it felt like part of her body. The fear, and the danger, too. They were part of it. Like the robe had spikes on the inside.   
Caeda never could say no to Davlen.  
 _Yes_ , she sent back, careful to keep her composure in front of the party. They’d gotten in enough trouble that day already. She looked around at the men they’d acquired. A Locksmith, an illegitimate prince, a haughty elf who Dorothy was looking at a bit too intensely.   
Trouble indeed.   
_I got held up in Zadash but I’m coming South._   
Caeda’s heart stopped. She thought of Phineas and it started beating again.   
Held up. The Volstruckers could be doing anything to him. Terrible things - his skin had looked sallow. Davlen had felt strong, had felt muscled, but Caeda could feel the small tears, scars where there hadn’t been scars before.   
Held up.   
And he’d asked her about the key. Even when she’d brought Maggie and Telemniel, when she’d laid her hand on his cheek and asked him to come with them, he’d asked her about the key.  
“You don’t understand,” he’d said to her. “You have no idea who I am now.”   
Caeda closed her eyes.   
Davlen had saved her. She wanted to save him. She wanted to save him so badly.  
“No,” she’d said. “This is who you’re choosing to be.”   
She had believed Davlen, in the dark, on the library floor, fingers grasping each other in hallways. She wanted him to believe her. So badly it hurt.   
But if he was coming South, it might not be for her. Caeda looked at Dorothy across the fire again. This unassuming girl with a key that was a curse, and a blessing.   
Maybe Davlen was following the key. But at least he was following.   
With a guilty jerk of her heart, she thought of Phineas, who was traipsing around the woods with Rainor somewhere. Phineas - whose bed she’d laid in the past few nights, who was sweet and smart and safe. So safe he’d watched from the window while she fought.   
Caeda didn’t want danger anymore. But, she thought as she looked around at her party, maybe she had no choice.   
“I…I have a confession to make too,” Maggie sobbed. “My real name…is Magnolia.” She wiped at tears. Caeda laid a hand on her shoulder and conjured one last message to Davlen.   
_Can I trust you?_  
There was no answer. 

*

Phineas looked around helplessly.   
“What does firewood even look like?”   
Rainor shrugged and picked up a stick.   
“I’ve never actually made camp before. This looks sort of like what the servants usually put in the fire.”   
Phineas took it from him, and examined it. It did look like what servants usually put in the fire. He tucked it under his arm. There was distant bickering from the girls gathered around the blacksmith. Phineas shuddered.   
The blacksmith, who was tall and muscled and strong, and had punched one of those men clean in the face while Phineas watched from the window.   
“So…you’re from Zadash?” Rainor asked, clearly only to break the silence.   
“Ah…no. From Rexxentrum.”  
“What are you doing with my sister and her friends, then?”   
Phineas sputtered. “I’m…ah. I’m sort of…I’m a friend…well, no, more than friends…I’m…involved…”   
Rainor grinned. “With the rude elf?”  
Phineas sighed in relief. “Yes. That one.”  
Rainor reached out and laid a hand on Phineas’s shoulder. “It must have been difficult to hear them talk about her ex like that. Telemniel’s certainly made some colorful friends, but you seem all right.”   
Phineas gave Rainor a small smile and held up his bundle of sticks. The bickering had died down.   
“Think we’ve pretended long enough?”   
“Yeah. It’s cold, let’s go.”   
Rainor walked ahead of Phineas in a gate that he recognized like a dog sniffing a scent. Phineas had been monied and carefree once.   
Before a Volstrucker student had come to him in the night. Before he’d done nothing at all. Before he’d met Caeda.   
The firelight illuminated her pale skin as they approached with their sticks. The gold hoops in her ear flashed, and Phineas’s stomach dropped.   
If he’d helped Davlen that night, would he ever have met her? Would her parents still be alive? Would they have come to him together?   
Caeda’s eyes landed on him, pale and wide and earnest. He resisted the urge to run to her right then. He wanted to spirit her away to a cottage on a mountain and never talk to anybody else again. He wanted to protect her.   
He didn’t want to watch from the window.   
She moved over to make room for him to sit next to her, and he sat, but he couldn’t bring himself to look at her. He looked instead at Ilias. Ilias, who had protected the tiefling without question or hesitation.   
Phineas had met the party because he’d been too afraid to travel home by himself. Davlen had found him in the Pentamarket with ease, and Caeda had rescued him. Phineas couldn’t even go with Caeda when she’d met him to try and talk him out of it.   
And he wanted to protect her, yes, but he also couldn’t stop imagining what they’d said to each other. What they’d done. Had she touched him? Had he touched her?   
But it was the past, he told himself, and Caeda had come back and found herself in his bed. That’s what he told himself.   
When everybody was asleep, there was a gentle shake of his shoulders, and Caeda pulled Phineas up and into the trees. He blinked and adjusted his glasses.   
“What is it?”   
“Are you all right?” she said.   
Even in the dark, it was like her pale eyes bore right into him.   
“I’m fine.”   
“You don’t seem fine. You seem angry.”  
“I’m not angry.” Phineas shook his head. “I’m…”  
Caeda laid her hand over his, and drew close to him. “Be honest with me.”  
Phineas looked down at her wide eyes, and lifted a hand to her cheek. Shame welled within him at the thought that Davlen could have done the same thing the day before.   
He broke away, and turned around.   
“I hated watching you in danger today, Caeda. I hated it. And I…all I could do was watch from the window. I felt so useless.”  
Caeda reached for his hand again.   
“Phineas, you know we can teach you to fight. You can learn. You aren’t here because you’re useful.”   
He released a bitter laugh. “Thank you.”   
“No, I…” Caeda fumbled for words. And then she turned him to her and kissed him, kissed him with the kind of desperation he felt whenever he looked at her.   
“I don’t think that’s all that’s bothering you,” she whispered when they broke apart.   
Phineas made a noise of frustration.   
“Talk to me,” Caeda said, and it sounded like a plea.   
He looked at the sky, a mess of black tree branches. A canopy of shadows, to hide his secrets. Hide his shame.   
“I know…I know that it is the past and you are your own person, and I cannot judge you for your past, but…it kills me to hear them talk about him that way.”   
She didn’t need to ask who Phineas was talking about.   
“And to think…had I been a braver man, if I had helped him, all those years ago, I might not have met you…I told you it was my biggest regret in life, and…”  
He trailed off, and then Caeda was kissing him again. But what Phineas wanted right now was her words. He felt like a cavern had opened in his chest and it might swallow him whole if she didn’t say what he wanted, if he wasn’t what she wanted.   
She had loved Davlen so much, that was obvious. Phineas wanted Caeda to love him like that. He didn’t want to share. He wanted her to tell him he didn’t have to share.   
“It’s in the past,” is what she said. “I told you I don’t want that anymore. It might not have happened, we might not have met, but we did. Can you believe me? Can we focus on now?” Her lip trembled. “Please?”  
Phineas stared at her. She kissed him again, desperate, so desperate.   
But it felt different than his desperation. When Caeda kissed him, Phineas felt like time and space stopped moving around him, and all he wanted to think about was her, all he wanted to was hold her and touch her and protect her and keep her safe. He was devoted to making her happy. He was devoted to making her safe. Phineas had never felt like this before, about anyone, and if he lost her he thought he might die.   
But when she broke apart from him, and rested her forehead against his, her eyes flicked to the woods, then back to him, so quickly he almost didn’t notice it.  
“For what it’s worth, I think you’re very, very handsome,” she murmured, and buried her head in his chest.   
He smiled and laid a hand on her hair. “And I think you’re…incredibly beautiful.”   
_The most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen_ , is what he didn’t add. As she took him by the hand and led him back to the camp, the hoop for Davlen in Caeda’s ear flashed.   
It was a silly thought, but Phineas couldn't help but wonder if he wasn't the only one who thought that.

*  
It was dark. Davlen was in pain.   
He was in pain. It was dark. There was water somewhere.   
But his throat was dry. Or maybe it was too wet.   
He felt like he was bleeding somewhere. But he’d stopped feeling blood a long time ago.   
Davlen had to go. He remembered now. He’d been sleeping - and now he had to go. Somewhere. South. Why?  
Vestele was going South. The key was going south.   
He remembered her face. It was the only thing he remembered. Pale and beautiful as she’d ever been, and solid and real. So real.   
_Follow her._ Had he thought it? Or had they put it in him? Had he told them about her? He didn’t remember.  
 _Get the key._  
He didn’t remember who’d said that, or why, so he thought he’d said it.   
Davlen looked at his hands. They were bloody.   
He held onto the last words he had from Vestele like they were the only thing keeping him alive. And maybe they were. Maybe she was.  
 _Can I trust you?_  
Davlen didn’t know. He didn’t know if he trusted himself.   
Vestele was real. Somebody hated her. Davlen hated her. Somebody loved her. Davlen loved her.   
All Davlen knew was one thing. He was going to follow her to the ends of the earth. 


	13. Tea Service

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> phineas is in PAIN, illias is a HIMBO

Phineas couldn't tear his eyes from the shattered teacup. The words were pounding in his head, in his heart. 

_He's following us here._

_He's been talking to me in my head._

_Don't you understand this is the only person I have left?_

The door opened and he looked up at Caeda. Her pale eyes were wide with the horror of realizing somebody had heard things they weren't meant to hear. Behind her, Telemniel's mother floated above the bed. She was pale and lit and glowing, and the light drifted softly to Caeda in a way that made her look like she was glowing too. Phineas felt like he might cough his heart up. She was _otherworldly_. And he was crouched on the floor with shattered tea. 

"Sorry - I'm - I offered to take the tea -" he mumbled, and shot up. He never heard her coming behind him - her steps were too soft. Elf soft.

Volstrucker soft. 

A hand closed around his wrist. Her hand. 

"Phineas." 

There was pain in his voice, but it didn't sound anything like his. Not like the world was tilting. Like the ocean was crashing through him, like there was water in his lungs and she was the only thing that could make him remember how to breathe. 

"Why didn't you tell me?"

"I didn't know if I could trust him," she said, with tears in her eyes.

Phineas's lip trembled as he looked back at her. He swallowed the tears, all too aware of her friends poking their heads out of the room behind them, where that glow still spilled out of the door. 

"What does that have to do with not telling me?" 

Caeda released his wrist, and sunk down to the floor, cradling her head in her hands.

"I don't know."

Her voice was so soft, so raw - the kind of emotion that Phineas could never coax out of her. Strong, solid Caeda. He wasn't looking at Caeda right now. He was looking at Vestele. And Phineas knew only one thing about Vestele: Davlen was the only thing she cared about. 

He turned on his feet and left her there in the hallway.

He was in a strange house. A fine house, but a strange one. He followed his feet to a dining room with a long table and rows of chairs and collapsed into one, then buried his head in his arms and let the breaths come, ragged and wrecked. Tears followed, and it felt like his heart was splitting in two in his chest. No matter how he tried he couldn't stop hearing her words. _The only person I have left._

Phineas could throw himself at her feet. He could put himself on a table and carve his heart out and offer it up to her, because she owned every single part of it. But she would never do the same to him. Because there, in her darkest corner, was Davlen. 

The door swung open, and Phineas looked up with alarm, prepared to run if she'd come after him, but it wasn't Caeda in the doorway. It was the blacksmith, Illias, with his muscles rippling under his shirt, his black hair pulled back, a slant to his face that looked familiar, but he couldn't quite place. Phineas quickly wiped the tears from under his glasses and cleared his throat. 

"Juliette sent me after you," said Illias with an awkward bob of his head. 

It took Phineas a moment to remember he was talking about the tiefling. There were too many aliases in this group to keep straight. Then he remembered all the nudging and winking of the previous night, how Illias had blushed bright red. 

Phineas was certain he'd blushed at some point. He'd slept with his arms tight around Caeda, breathing in the scent of her skin, trying to hold onto any part of her she would give him. Wanting the one she wouldn't. 

He teared up again. 

Illias closed the door behind him and slid into the chair next to Phineas, then patted his arm awkwardly. That made Phineas want to cry harder, but he kept it down. 

"I don't want to ask if you're okay," Illias said. "Because you're clearly not okay. But I understand." 

Phineas removed his glasses and pinched his nose. "Do you really?" 

"The day Juliette was supposed to leave...I felt like my whole world was going black." 

"But you came. You're here. You love her?" 

Illias nodded once, silent, simple. Like Caeda without her sharpness. 

"I've never felt this way about anybody before," Phineas admitted. "I want..." 

He wanted to live inside her. He wanted to build her a house using his own bones as support. He wanted her to think about him, always, the way he was always thinking about her. He wanted her smile, he wanted it to be for him, only for him, he wanted to lift it off her lips and swallow it and keep it inside of him as his greatest treasure. He wanted to matter to her as much as Davlen mattered to her. 

More than Davlen mattered to her. 

He thought all of this, and looked at Illias with his mouth hanging open, whose eyebrows knit together in a way that was half-confusion, half-understanding. Again Phineas thought of watching Illias punch that guard clean in the face to defend Juliette. While he'd stayed inside. 

It was no wonder she hadn't told him about Davlen. Davlen could probably eat him alive. He probably _would_ eat him alive, because he was going to be here, soon. Because Caeda was going to stay behind for him. 

Phineas closed his eyes. 

Illias placed a hand on his back. 

"I know." 

"I don't know what to do." Phineas's voice was softer than he'd ever heard himself speak. 

Illias shrugged. "I don't think you can _do_ anything." 

"She doesn't know if this man will kill her, and she wants to throw herself at his feet. All because..."

"Didn't you ever have a first love?"

Phineas didn't know how to say that this was it, _this_ was his first love, and if he was lucky, his only one. He didn't know how his heart would ever become untangled from hers, how he could ever stop feeling like seeing her smile was the only thing worth living for. He wondered if Davlen felt that way. He wondered if _Vestele_ had smiled. 

She'd told him so little of that part of herself. So little about Davlen, about the Academy. 

Phineas wished he could tell Caeda he would love her either way. He wished he believed that Vestele was capable of loving him back. 

"Not like this," is what Phineas said, muffled into his hands. They sat there like that for a long time, Illias's hand on his back in the dining room. Eventually, they got up. 

Phineas went into the kitchen. And he offered to make tea. 

*

The road was long and dark and Davlen was following a bright, white light to the end of it. _Vestele._ He turned her name over in his mouth, imagined her lips and her waist and her pale, exposed throat. 

He would kiss her, if she let him. He would back her up against the wall and put his lips right where he knew it made her shiver. He would have her undone by his hands, squirming and splayed out. He would fall asleep listening to her heartbeat, her long, slender fingers in her hair. 

And Vestele would wait for him. She would wait for him because she wanted to save him. 

It was dark and it was cold and Davlen was alone. But she didn't want him to be alone. She wouldn't leave him alone. So they would be dark and cold together. She'd come willingly. 

That's what he was counting on.


End file.
